FBI was given cctv of 3 men seen in the area outside the apartment that night...where is it now?/Sunday Express

NEW EVIDENCE ON MADDIE

Sunday December 16,2007
By James Murray

The FBI has been asked to examine CCTV footage of three men acting suspiciously near the Algarve apartment that Madeleine McCann disappeared from.

The night before she vanished, two men were seen acting nervously near the complex and on the evening she went, the same men were seen with a third man.

One of the men captured on camera on both nights bears a strong resemblance to a man with long, dark hair seen carrying a child, as reported by the McCanns friend Jane Tanner.

Today we can also reveal that sniffer dogs taken to a disused barn 30 miles from Praia da Luz have shown strong interest in two sites.

One is what appears to be a 14ft mineshaft opening to an underground cavity, and the other is where earth has been disturbed, possibly covering a shallow grave.

Detectives have asked for specialist imaging equipment to be brought in and are planning to excavate the shaft.

Portuguese police are desperate to identify the three men seen on the CCTV footage and have had long discussions with British detectives on how to enhance the grainy footage to get clear images of the three faces.

They have been told to send all the footage to an FBI lab in America, which has the best equipment in the world for zooming in on CCTV images.

The footage was gathered in the early days of the investigation. It was set aside because detectives could not see the faces clearly.

But now that the investigation has been reinvigorated by the new chief investigator, Paulo Rebelo, old material is being reviewed.

A source close to the investigation revealed: There is a great deal of interest from the new team in the CCTV footage taken from a business premise between 50 and 100 yards from the apartment where Madeleine was staying.

On May 2 in the evening two men are clearly seen hanging around in the area. One is smoking and both are seen with their heads down, glancing from side to side.

One of them looks similar to the artists impression of a man seen taking a child away.

They are in the area for a time and then one disappears and comes back into view. The non-smoker who stays is the one who looks like the drawing of the man seen carrying a child from the apartment.

Their behaviour does not look normal. It clearly looks furtive and suspicious but because of the quality of the film it is difficult to make out their facial features.

Kate and Gerry issued a statement yesterday, thanking their supporters as they prepared for an incredibly difficult Christmas, their first without Madeleine.

The couple are staying in Britain but it is not known how much of the holiday will be spent at their Rothley, Leicestershire, home.

www.sundayexpress.co.uk/p...-on-Maddie

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this cctv seems to have gone quiet.Did they get the images back from the FBI??? who was in the cctv????

Some things in this case have been left and forgotten about..never to be cleared up or reported on again.....like the mine shaft they talk about in that report.What was done about that???

I wondered about this CCTV footage quite a few times over the last year or so.

Where is it? Did it ever show anything? Were these men ruled out? Surely this should have surfaced in the PJ's files.

Or was this just another unsubstantiated rumour that came out in the days before we knew that the Portuguese press just print any old crap, it doesnt have to be true.

Remember the French motorway service station sighting? A student looked right into her eyes and saw the mark. The first policeman on site saw the cctv footage and agreed it was Madeleine. Then the French police force dismiss it, without ever showing it to Kate or Gerry. I want to know WHY they were not allowed to see it.

This report has often crossed my mind too. Did the PJ get this footage back from the FBI? Was there ever any footage to begin with? If there was, do these images fit with the e-fit descriptions given by the two individual witnesses that look alarmingly similar to each other?

Did the PJ ever search this mineshaft and was the shallow grave excavated? Or was this just more unsubstantiated garbage leaked by the PJ to the Portuguese press, designed to try and put pressure on the parents?

I can't think that this was ever searched, if it was we would have heard about it. If the reports are untrue, that explains why but if the reports were true, it does not explain anything and if I were Gerry and Kate I would be asking the investigators to sort this out and check it out, so it can be ruled out.

In any case I cannot understand why the famous Eddie and Keela were not taken to this place. This was recommended by their handler, we know this because it was in the official report so why did Gonc NOT allow it?

Bloody odd if you ask me and they should be searched now and I said this and the time too. I remember getting attacked by Dadto3 on the DX for even suggesting that these areas should be searched thoroughly.

Count Down to Gonc's trial has begun, anyone know when it actually is? Perhaps Maria does.

Re Gonc's trial no, I don't know about it. Souldn't be before September and somehow I got the 4th or 9th in my head. I didn't even check which day of the week these are!

maria wrote:Re Gonc's trial no, I don't know about it. Souldn't be before September and somehow I got the 4th or 9th in my head. I didn't even check which day of the week these are!

hi maria....the 4th is next Thursday..................the 9th would be the following Tuesday!!!

Lets hope the 4th is the day they stand before the court and the 9th is the day they get their sentence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

Hope you will consider keeping us all informed when it starts?

No doubt about that, see if the media cooperates...