The latest search for Madeleine McCann has ended in Portugal as tents were taken down and heavy machinery was removed from the site.
Officers have spent three days combing a reservoir and surrounding scrubland after receiving “certain tip-offs”.
It’s not yet known if anything significant was found, but a number of bags were taken from the site.
A police boat entered the water at the Arade dam in Silves municipality on Tuesday.
A police search team work on the shore of the Arade dam. Pic: AP
Personnel began to dig in an area of land on a peninsula at the Barragem do Arade on Wednesday afternoon.
A source close to the investigation told Reuters news agency, there was “nothing to report” after the search, which involved cutting back vast undergrowth and using rakes and pickaxes, as well as sniffer dogs.
German prosecutor, Christian Wolters, added: “Of course there is a certain expectation, but it is not
high”.
He told Reuters that it was important to show that authorities were investigating the case.
The reservoir is about 31 miles from where the British girl went missing during a family holiday in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on 3 May 2007. Madeleine was just three years old at the time.
Personnel at Barragem do Arade reservoir
“Of course we are still looking for the body,” Mr Wolters said. “We’re not just looking for that, of course. There are other
things too.
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“Any discovery of clothing could help the investigation,” he said.
German prosecutors last year named Christian B an official suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance.
It is claimed the convicted child abuser and drug dealer used to visit the reservoir, allegedly referring to it as “his paradise”.
Christian B is currently in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same area of the Algarve region from where Madeleine went missing, but he has not been charged with any crime related to the disappearance.
Pic: AP
The new search was ordered as the Home Office granted an extra £110,000 in funding this financial year for the Metropolitan Police to assist with finding Madeleine, down from just over £300,000 last year.
The total funding given to Operation Grange – the name given to the Met’s operation into Madeleine – has been just under £13.1 million since 2011.
