Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are reportedly cross-examining soil from a reservoir searched a fortnight ago with samples from a camper van belonging to the prime suspect.
Search teams spent three days in late May scouring the Barragem do Arade reservoir in southern Portugal, about 30 miles from where the three-year-old went missing during a family holiday in the resort of Praia da Luz in 2007.
Police are now testing samples of soil taken from the site, and comparing them to traces of dirt found in a VW camper van belonging to convicted rapist Christian Brueckner, according to the Mirror.
Last month’s reservoir search was carried out at the request of German investigators who believe 46-year-old Brueckner, kidnapped and murdered the missing youngster.
He is in prison in Germany for the rape of a woman in Praia da Luz in 2005, and is suspected of further rapes and child sexual abuse committed in the area between 2000 and 2017.
German authorities have not revealed what triggered the latest search operation, but the prosecutor for the city of Braunschweig, Christian Wolters, said they were acting on the basis of “certain tips”.
He told German public broadcaster NDR the new information had not come from the suspect and they did not have a confession or “any indication from the suspect of where it would make sense to search”.
The Sun reported that investigators previously found photos and video of Brueckner at the reservoir. He has reportedly denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
The three-day hunt for evidence last month saw police flatten a specific area of woodland and dig near the remote reservoir. Uniformed and plain-clothed officers spent hours scouring the banks of the reservoir – hammering away at the ground with pickaxes and combing through small rocks with rakes and spades.
Deep holes, thought to have been bored for soil sampling, were left in the ground after police ended their search.
British officers from the Metropolitan Police were also present while the work was carried out in order to inform Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry, who live in Rothley, Leicestershire, of any developments.
Mr Wolters said that items seized as part of searches would be evaluated over the coming days and weeks.
Madeleine was three when she vanished while on holiday with her parents in Praia da Luz, after they left her and her younger twin siblings asleep in their apartment while they went out to dinner with friends.
It is not the first time the reservoir has been searched.
In 2008, Portuguese lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia paid for specialist divers to scour it after he claimed to have been tipped off by criminal contacts that Madeleine’s body was there.
The most recent search in Portugal in relation to her disappearance took place nine years ago in 2014, when British police were given permission to examine scrubland near where she vanished.
May’s search came 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 the probe, named Operation Grange, has been just under £13.1 million since 2011.
