A former Belgian justice minister has told a British tabloid that police issued a warning about a paedophile network three days before Madeleine McCann vanished from a holiday apartment in Portugal in May 2007, and suggested the child may have been taken "to order."
Marc Verwilghen, who led an inquiry into the crimes of convicted paedophile Marc Dutroux, told The Sun the alert appeared to have come from Belgian police and that intelligence indicated a Belgian paedophile ring had made an "order" for a young girl shortly before Madeleine went missing from Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007. Verwilghen said someone allegedly photographed the child and sent the image to Belgium, where a purchaser purportedly approved her.
Verwilghen, who served three years as Belgium's justice minister and who has studied the Dutroux case, said the earlier investigation into Dutroux in the 1990s showed organised paedophile networks and that inquiries at the time were not allowed to examine broader networks in full. Dutroux was arrested in 1996 and later convicted of abducting, raping and killing several girls; he was given a life sentence in 2004. Verwilghen said those cases demonstrated that abductions could involve organisation and planning by more than one person.
The claims by Verwilghen were reported in the British press and should be read as his account. The disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine — who vanished while her parents dined nearby at a tapas bar — sparked a global search and long-running investigations by police in the United Kingdom, Portugal and Germany.
The remarks come as the Metropolitan Police said they had requested an interview with Christian Brueckner, the 49-year-old German man who has been the primary suspect in the German federal investigation into Madeleine's disappearance, but that he had declined to be interviewed. Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell of the Metropolitan Police said an International Letter of Request was submitted for legal reasons and that the suspect refused to comply. Cranwell said the man "remains a suspect in the Metropolitan Police's own investigation" and that, in the absence of an interview, officers "will nevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of enquiry."
Brueckner has been held in Germany on unrelated offences and his imminent release has been reported by media outlets. The Metropolitan Police statement said officers have worked closely with their German and Portuguese counterparts over a number of years to investigate the disappearance and to support Madeleine's family.
The claims of an alleged Belgian alert and an organised "order" for a child have not been corroborated by public records released by Belgian, Portuguese or British police, and spokespeople for those forces did not provide immediate comment on Verwilghen's remarks when they were reported. Investigations into Madeleine McCann's disappearance have involved multiple agencies and have produced a range of lines of inquiry over the past 18 years.
The case remains open and under investigation by the Metropolitan Police and partner agencies. Authorities have previously said they will follow credible information and pursue legal avenues of cooperation with other countries while respecting the requirements of international legal processes.