The operation carried out in the Algarve by the Portuguese police together with German and British troops in search of new clues that facilitate the whereabouts of Madeleine McCann, the British girl who disappeared 16 years ago in this region of southern Portugal, has concluded today after three days of searches without the results of the expertise having been disclosed.
The media deployed in the Arade reservoir, some 50 kilometers from where the minor disappeared and a place frequented by the main suspect, the German Christian Brueckner, began to withdraw from the land on Thursday afternoon. The collected material will be handed over to the German authorities for analysis, the Portuguese police have reported.
According to a statement made public this Thursday, during the search "some material" was collected that will be handed over to the German authorities for analysis. This search was requested by the German authorities investigating the case.
After the withdrawal of the operation, the police cordon that prevented access to the search area has been lifted and the effects of the excavations carried out by the police in the area have been seen, with large piles of earth, broken rocks, uprooted brush and marks of the use of heavy machinery in a limited area a few meters from the shore of the reservoir.
The Arade dam was a place frequented by Brueckner, who spent long periods with his motorhome in the area. The tip of an informant, according to local media, led the German authorities to request search work in the reservoir.
The area was already searched in 2008 by private investigators without success, but forensic medicine experts agree that technological advances in recent years are essential to solve the case if evidence of the girl's disappearance is finally found.
Madeleine was three years old when she disappeared on May 3, 2007 from the room where she slept with her little brothers in a tourist complex in Praia da Luz. After years of investigation, the case took a turn in 2020 and the German Christian Brueckner, imprisoned in his country for other crimes, became the main suspect.
The German Prosecutor's Office in Braunschweig works with the theory that Madeleine died at the hands of Brueckner, who has a long history of crimes for sexual abuse and pedophilia, some of them in Portugal.
