It is the missing child mystery that has remained unsolved for more than 18 years — the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann.
The three-year-old vanished from her bed while on vacation with her family in the southern Portuguese resort town of Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007.
Since that day, she has never been seen, in a case that has received worldwide interest for years amid reports of sightings, books and television documentaries about her disappearance.
Almost two decades on, investigators in the United Kingdom, Portugal and Germany are still piecing together what happened on the night Madeleine went missing.
Images of Madeleine McCann were broadcast and distributed around the world in the immediate aftermath of her disappearance. (AFP)
On Monday local time, Portuguese police acting on behalf of a public prosecutor in Germany announced that fresh searches would be conducted.
So, what are they hoping to find and will any answers finally be reached? Here is what we know.
Searches will focus on Lagos and Praia da Luz
The country’s investigative Judicial Police (PJ) said in a statement that it was executing a European Investigation Order on behalf of the public prosecutor’s office in the German city of Braunschweig.
In 2022, that city identified German national Christian Brueckner as an official suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Police in Portugal, as well as authorities in the UK and in Germany, have been searching for Madeleine McCann for more than 18 years. (AP: Armando Franca)
The PJ added that “a wide range of investigations, namely search warrants” would be carried out between June 2 and 6 in Portugal’s Municipality of Lagos and all evidence seized would be handed over to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
The search for traces of the child’s body will focus on an area between Praia da Luz and one of the houses where Brueckner lived when Madeleine disappeared, according to news reports by CNN Portugal and German newspaper Bild.
Braunschweig prosecutors told Reuters “criminal procedural measures” related to the McCann case were taking place in Portugal involving the BKA and Portuguese law enforcement, but did not provide further details.
Portuguese police, aided by German and British officers, last searched an area the Arade dam near Silves in the country’s south in 2023. (AP: Joao Matos)
Who is the main suspect in Madeleine McCann’s disappearance?
Christian Brueckner is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old female US tourist in Praia da Luz in 2005.
Madeleine McCann suspect Christian Brueckner acquitted of unrelated sexual crimes
In the trial in Brunswick, Brueckner faced three charges of aggravated rape and two of sexual abuse of children committed between 2000 and 2017.
He has been formally identified as a suspect in the McCann case and is under investigation on suspicion of her murder, but has never been charged.
In October 2024, he was acquitted by a German court of unrelated sexual abuse charges relating to two children between 2000 and 2017.
Prosecutors in that case had called for him to be jailed for a further 15 years, describing him as a “dangerous psychopathic sadist”.
