Madeleine in Donegal, pictured second from left in April 2007. She disappeared in Portugal two weeks later.
MADDIE McCann was snatched from her holiday apartment in Portugal nine years ago by a gang helped by a man who worked at the Mark Warner holiday complex, British police have said.
Maddie has strong Donegal connections through her father Gerry and only visited here just weeks before she disappeared while on holidays in Portugal with her parents.
Police believe the holiday complex worker who drove a tourist bus for the Mark Warner company was also working with a 16-year-old and two other men.
British police have revealed Madeleine may have been snatched during a break-in at the apartment where she was sleeping.
Mobile calls between the men on the night of her disappearance have placed the men at the scene.
Now British police want to quiz the three suspects further, having already questioned them previously.
During a radio interview this week, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said he believed there was “one final lead” in the case.
However British police are frustrated with the Portuguese authorities’ refusal to let them follow up on it.
The three men have been declared suspects by Portuguese police who arrested them on the request of British police but they have been released.
When they were previously interviewed the men admitted petty theft from apartments at the complex but denied being involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.
The youth said he had got involved in crime because he was desperate to have a fast sports car.
Two holiday apartments in the same block where the McCanns stayed where broken into two weeks before the family arrived.
The suspects are Jose Carlos da Silva, 30, who used to drive guests to their apartments at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, Ricardo Rodrigues, 24, and Paulo Ribeiro, 53.
Madeleine’s mother Kate, 48, and father Gerry, 47, believe the theory she was snatched in a bungled burglary is one of the “most credible” explanations for her disappearance.
Scotland Yard said: “It’s not something we would discuss.”
There have been nearly 9,000 reported sightings of Madeleine around the world since her disappearance.
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