Portuguese police continue to interview McCann friends

Portuguese detectives continue to sit in on interviews with friends of Kate and Gerry McCann, police confirmed today.

It is believed the witnesses being questioned today are 34-year-old Fiona and 41-year-old David Payne from Leicester.

Police said that witnesses and Portuguese detectives had arrived at the force’s headquarters in Enderby today to be re-interviewed.

The force’s spokeswoman would not say which members of the Tapas Seven - friends of the McCanns who were with them the night their four-year-old daughter Madeleine disappeared – were being re-interviewed.

The interviews are being conducted by British officers as a three-man team of Portuguese detectives, led by Paulo Rebelo, listen in.

Yesterday, Jane Tanner, 37, and her partner, 36-year-old Russell O’Brien, did not leave the interviews until 9pm, about ten hours after they arrived.

But sources said they were allowed a number of breaks and that the interviews had given them the chance to put their point of view across “strongly”.

Meanwhile, Mr and Mrs McCann continue to prepare for their trip to Brussels later today. They are travelling down to London this afternoon, where they will catch the Eurostar to the Belgium capital.

Tomorrow, the couple from Rothley, Leicestershire, will carry out a PowerPoint presentation to MEPs about the need for greater co-ordination between European countries when a child is abducted.

Their plan includes the introduction of a new dedicated information hotline.

Mrs McCann, 40, and 39-year-old Mr McCann, and their team, have already reserved the number – 116 000 – but it has yet to go live.

They recently visited America to see the “Amber” alert system, which allows police officers to commandeer the airwaves and television channels in different states if they believe a child to have been abducted.

The system also allows news alerts, often including the registration number of a suspect’s vehicle, to be flashed up on digital signs above the country’s motorways.

The couple believe such a system, or a similar system, could have helped find their daughter Madeleine in the crucial hours after she went missing from their apartment in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 last year.

Their declaration calling for such a system has received cross-party support already. It is being sponsored by five MEPs.

They are the Tory Edward McMillan-Scott MEP, the Liberal Democrat’s Diana Wallace MEP, Labour’s Glenys Kinnock MEP, and two other MEPs – the Italian Roberta Angelilli MEP and the German Evelyne Gebhardt MEP.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ spokesman, said: “For Kate and Gerry this is an important opportunity to ensure better co-ordination in Europe when a child goes missing to make sure that no other family goes through the anguish that they are continuing to endure.

“They hope to get the support of a majority of the Parliament’s MEPs and with such a moral authority they hope that the European Commission will ensure that such a system comes in to being.”

The declaration will remain open for three months and a majority of the 785 MEPs is required to sign it before it can go before the European Parliament.

The visit is being filmed by a documentary team who are putting together a programme entitled Madeleine, One Year On: Campaign for Change. It is being broadcast on Wednesday April 30 at a time yet to be fixed, to mark the first anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance.