By: CECÍLIA PIRES
PORTUGUESE POLICE looking for Madeleine McCann have been searching through paedophilia websites in their attempts to trace the little girl.
The new head of the investigation, Paulo Rebelo, who took office last week, announced that all lines of the investigation were to be kept open, including a possible paedophilia kidnapping, and that further forensic reports were to arrive at the Portimão PJ “at any moment now”.
Information recently collected after police raids across the country allowed the investigators to access 148 private and commercial computers with hundreds of photos of children being abused or sexually exposed.
The investigators from the High-Technology Crime Department are helping in the Madeleine case by cleaning all the images and looking carefully at all the girls with Madeleine looks and around her age.
This investigation is being complemented with information from Europol and Interpol data files, where hundreds of new images arrive every day.
Meanwhile, judge Pedro Frias, who represents the Public Prosecutor, has authorised the Portimão Office of Polícia Judiciária to go ahead with an expert’s inspection of the computer rented by Gerry McCann while the family stayed in the Algarve.
Questions ready
The judge’s only demand was that this expert’s inspection would be observed by a representative of the Public Prosecutor, so that the information can be validated if the case includes the McCanns as arguidos should it reach the court stage.
All emails sent and received, as well as all websites visited through that computer, will be identified by the police. Registrations and other information are also traceable by the police investigators.
The car rented by the couple has also been seized by the PJ investigators and further examinations are said to be under preparation by the public prosecutor’s team.
Cartas rogatórias, inquiring letters, with the questions to be asked by the British police to Gerry and Kate, and also the friends of the family who were at the Ocean Club at the time Madeleine went missing, are said to be ready at the public prosecutor’s office but waiting for the forensic reports from the Birmingham Forensic Science Service for a decision on their contents.
This information was not confirmed by judge Pedro Frias, who remains tight-lipped about everything related to the Madeleine case.
The judge has, however, asked repeatedly that the national board of judges allow the release of some information to the media in a strategy to control the systematic speculation involving the investigations since day one.
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