'No guarantee' Maddy is alive
Police were tonight able to offer the family of missing youngster Madeleine McCann no firm assurance that she is still alive.
The blow came just hours after Madeleine’s mother, Kate, made a powerful direct appeal to anyone holding her daughter to let her go.
Earlier today, Mrs McCann made a carefully crafted appeal offering anyone holding Madeleine a potential way out by begging them to free her daughter or take her to a place of safety.
Madeleine’s family said yesterday that they continued to have hope following an emotional church service in the village of Priya da Luz, on the Algarve.
On Saturday, Portugal judicial police offered hope to the family, saying that they believe that she was still alive and may still be in the Alrgarve region.
But tonight, on the fifth night of Madeleine’s disappearance from the family’s holiday apartment, when asked how confident he was that Madeleine was still alive, Chief Inspector Oligeario Sousa said he could not be confident that she is still alive or still in the region.
He said: “It is very difficult to give you an answer because we have no facts to sustain that the child is alive or not.
“We are searching for the child until the moment she appears.
“We can say nothing more because we are not magicians.
“All the authorities involved are doing the best efforts to recover the child.”
At a chaotic press conference which began more than two hours late, and was dominated by questions fired in Portuguese and English, often simultaneously, he said that he could reveal little about the case because of the restrictions of Portuguese law.
He insisted that, as a father himself, police were doing everything they could to find Madeleine.
Speaking of the McCann’s pain, he said: “What they are feeling now I can’t imagine, I am a father too, all the police, we are fathers and mothers.
“It is probably pain with no measure they are feeling. I want to assure the family and all the people involved that the professionals are doing the best they can.”
Chief Inspector Sousa repeatedly said that he could not publish an artist’s impression of a man seen acting suspiciously because he feared it could harm the case.
Asked whether he was keeping the family themselves fully informed, he said: “The family is the number one interest in the case but even then, they must be a little far from the investigation.”
Earlier today, Mrs McCann made a brave direct plea to anyone holding Madeleine.
She begged: “Please, please do not hurt her.
“Please do not scare her.”
