Madeleine appeal follows image of 'disturbing' man

The family of missing Madeleine McCann issued an appeal for information today after an image of the face of a man they believe could be involved in her disappearance was released to the public.

Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, said dozens of calls had been received since the picture of the man, based on the testimony of tourist Gail Cooper, was issued yesterday.

The olive-skinned man was seen acting suspiciously near the apartment complex in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz where Madeleine vanished on May 3 last year.

One of the new images bears a striking resemblance to an earlier drawing of a man seen carrying a child through the complex on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance.

Mr Mitchell said: “What is important is the drawings we have done, based on Gail’s testimony – very, very similar to the drawing of the man that Jane Tanner, one of Gerry and Kate’s friends, saw on the night of May 3 with a child in his arms.

“We are not saying it is definitely the same man, but we are saying: ’Who is this guy?’. We need to know where he is, we need to know what he was doing and he needs to eliminate himself, if he is innocent.”

Mrs Cooper described seeing an olive-skinned man with straggly collar-length hair acting suspiciously on a number of occasions in the weeks before Madeleine’s disappearance.

She said she saw the man walking by himself in heavy rain on the deserted beach at Praia da Luz on April 20.

Later the same afternoon, Mrs Cooper said she received a visit from the same man, whom she described as “disturbing”.

The man was nervous and agitated and claimed to be collecting for a local orphanage, she said.

The man spoke fairly good English, but with a heavy accent, Mrs Cooper said, and she got rid of him quickly because she was apprehensive about him.

Two days later Mrs Cooper, who was on holiday with her husband John, saw the same man hanging around a children’s outing to the beach organised by the Mark Warner resort.

Madeleine took part in the same outings in the days leading up to her disappearance.

Mr Mitchell said the man was seen by Mrs Cooper and her husband on three separate occasions acting suspiciously and drawing attention to himself.

He said in two of those instances he was hanging around in the “proximity” of children.

Mr Mitchell said the orphanage the man claimed he was collecting for did not exist and the road accident that he talked about “never happened”.

Describing her encounter with the man, Mrs Cooper told GMTV: “It just unnerved me and I am not the type who would get unnerved. There was just something totally unpleasant and I walked away from the door feeling quite vulnerable really and unnerved about it.

“Not in any way that he was menacing or threatening and I did not think he was going to approach and want to come in the villa or anything. I just felt it was unpleasant.”

Mr Mitchell said Mr and Mrs McCann have been “buoyed” by the picture, but said Portuguese police were told about the sighting of the man in May.

He refused to attack the way the investigation has been run, saying: “I am not going to criticise the Portuguese police. We just want them to get on with the job of finding Madeleine.”

The photofit of the man emerged after Melissa Little, a police-trained artist hired by the McCann team, produced two sketches of the man after speaking to Mrs Cooper, who described the sketches as “excellent” likenesses.

Mr Mitchell said the McCann team has drawn up an action plan for how they want the investigation to proceed from here.

First, they want a worldwide search for the man, coordinated by a central telephone number manned by their private detective agency to identify and locate the man in the sketches.

All information gleaned from this is to be passed on to the Portuguese police.

Secondly, they want a full review of all police records and witness statements, including one taken from a 12-year-old girl who reported sightings of a strange man in the Portuguese resort in May last year.

Thirdly, they want complete collaboration between the Portuguese police, Interpol and the authorities in Spain, Morocco and Britain.

Since Madeleine’s disappearance, only three people have been named as official suspects – Mr and Mrs McCann, and British expatriate Robert Murat.

Mr and Mrs McCann have always strenuously denied any involvement.

Asked by GMTV presenter Fiona Phillips about Mrs Cooper’s view that this information had been “sat upon” after she gave the information to the police in May, Mr Mitchell said: “Well, that is her view, and I understand why, what eight months down the line, only now, we have done the drawing.

“We are not going to criticise the police, they have got a difficult job but it does seem to be incredibly slow-moving and very bureaucratic, and Kate, Gerry and their friends want to get on with this.

“If the police still have any uncertainties or any inconsistencies in the timelines or anything like that, friends want to talk to them.

“By all means come over to England, Jane Tanner has offered to go back to Portugal on the basis of this, to run through things again.

“We just need to get through this phase, get this arguido status away from Kate and Gerry... and let’s get back to the core role of what our investigators are now doing, searching for Madeleine.”