Portuguese police wanted to bug McCanns

Portuguese police wanted to bug the parents of missing Madeleine McCann but a judge refused to give permission, their case files have revealed.

Police wanted to bug Gerry and Kate McCann to eavesdrop on their conversations before making the couple “arguidos”, or formal suspects, last summer.

Their files from the investigation have revealed that on August 1 last year, detectives requested permission to place two bugs in the McCanns’ apartment in Praia da Luz and one in their car.

But judge Pedro Frias refused to grant the order, saying the couple’s witness statements would be enough.

The McCanns’ arguido status was lifted on July 21, when prosecutors shelved the case.

Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday flat in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 last year.

A cluster of new leads in Holland and Belgium were today being examined after Belgian police said they had received more than 100 reports of possible sightings of the youngster.

The sightings came after it was revealed a Scotland Yard informant suggested Madeleine was stolen to order by a Belgian paedophile gang.

Met sources said they did “everything possible” with the tip.

Artist sketches of a man and woman seen in an Amsterdam shop with a girl who identified herself as “Maddie” have also been released.

The pictures were drawn by a police artist on the evidence of Anna Stam, 41, who met a girl who looked like Madeleine in her party shop in early May last year. She was with a man and a woman and two other children.

The drawings, commissioned by the Daily Mirror, show a swarthy, dark-haired man with pencil moustache and short dark hair and a light brown-haired woman with thin lips.

The man, aged between 35 and 40, spoke Portuguese while the woman, who was in her 40s, spoke English. She told Ms Stam they were from a French travelling circus.

Ms Stam said the little girl, who looked like Madeleine apart from the colour of her hair, asked her: “Do you know where my mummy is?”

On being told that her mother was a little further back in the store, the child replied: “She is not my mummy” and added: “She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy.”

A second Dutch sighting was also reported. Hannie Wiechmann, 71, called police after seeing a young child she believed to be the missing girl in Amsterdam in the second week of May last year.

Alain Remue, who heads the Belgian police missing persons unit, said about a third of the reported sightings in Belgium were from clairvoyants and another third lacked concrete information. Around 30, however, they were able to investigate further.

He said officers had examined “every possible link” between the disappearance and the information they had received.

Belgian sightings recorded in Portuguese police files included one from Line Compere, 31, who told Belgian police she saw a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child who looked “very much” like Madeleine with an Eastern European couple on the number 18 tram heading towards the main Midi train station in Brussels on the morning of May 15 last year.

A British traveller contacted police after seeing a child asleep on a train from Brussels to Antwerp on May 27 last year and concluding she could have been drugged.

A girl looking strikingly like Madeleine was spotted in a shop in Mouscron, near the French border, accompanied by an English-speaking woman on June 2 last year.

A little girl with a “strong resemblance” to Madeleine was seen in a snack bar in Gooik, near Brussels, on June 8 with a known 33-year-old Portuguese man who lives in Amsterdam.

The man, who spoke English, Portuguese and a little Dutch, left in a hurry when the bar’s owner started discussing Madeleine’s disappearance with other customers.

Police information-sharing agency Sirene in Belgium wrote to the Portuguese and Dutch authorities requesting that they check their databases for any details about the man and his family status.

A handwritten note in Portuguese on the document reads “Neg”, suggesting that the sighting was discounted.“

Despite warnings that the Scotland Yard intelligence may be flawed, investigators employed by the McCanns were vigorously pursuing the leads in Belgium.

The McCanns family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said the couple’s investigators welcomed information about all possible sightings but were most interested in recent reports.

He urged people to pass on any leads to the detectives using the contact numbers on the McCanns’ website, www.findmadeleine.com.

Mr Mitchell said: “The critical information they really need is recent sightings that would suggest where Madeleine is now.”