Madeleine McCann, the British girl who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 aged just three, is assumed to be dead and an imprisoned German child abuser is the murder suspect, a German prosecutor says.
McCann vanished from her bedroom on May 3 during a family holiday in the Algarve while her parents were dining with friends nearby in the resort of Praia da Luz.Her disappearance sparked an international search, with missing posters of the little girl's face papered across the world and celebrity appeals for information that could help track her down and bring her abductor to justice.
"We assume that the girl is dead," Braunschweig state prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said on Thursday, local time. "The public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig is investigating a 43-year-old German national on suspicion of murder."No body has ever been found, but the German statements that the young girl was assumed dead were the most authoritative thus far on her fate. Family and supporters had always held out the hope that she might still be alive somewhere.
German police said on Wednesday that, while the exact sequence of events was still a subject of investigation, the suspect may have had a sexual motive. It was also possible that he had made a spontaneous decision to abduct McCann during a break-in of the apartment where she was sleeping, police said.
They are treating the case as suspected murder, though British police said the case remains a missing person inquiry.
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