Maddie may have been abducted 'to order'

AAP - British toddler Madeleine McCann could have been abducted "to order" for a Belgian pedophile ring, Portuguese police files suggest.

Reports in Britain said that Scotland Yard passed on a report from an informant who said a photograph of the child on holiday in Portugal was taken and passed to a "purchaser" in Belgium days before she vanished on May 3, 2007.

The information was contained in an email from Scotland Yard, and Portuguese police pursued the lead with Interpol, which gathered further reports from Belgium, Britain, Finland and Germany.
But Portuguese chief detective Paulo Rebelo, head of the Madeleine inquiry, ruled that all but the German intelligence showed a "lack of credibility" and ordered that the tip-off should be filed.

"Intelligence suggests that a pedophile ring in Belgium made an order for a young girl three days before Madeleine McCann was taken," the email said.

"The purchaser agreed that the girl was suitable and Maddie was taken," it added.

Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday, from a hotel room during a family holiday in Praia da Luz, a coastal Algarve town.

Last month, Portugal's attorney-general ordered police to halt their 14-month investigation because detectives had uncovered no evidence of a crime.

The case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann have waged a far-reaching international campaign to find their daughter, but there has been no reliable indication of what might have happened to her despite numerous reported sightings from around the world.