Maltese police probe Madeleine sightings
Madeleine's parents will release 50 balloons from the resort from which she was kidnapped to mark the fiftieth day she has been missing
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Friday, 22, Jun 2007 07:40
Police in Malta have launched a "full scale" investigation after four people claimed to have seen Madeleine McCann on the Mediterranean island.
There have been a host of false sightings across Europe since four-year-old Madeleine was abducted from her parents' holiday resort in the Algarve, Portugal, on May 3rd.
But Superintendent Pierre Calleja of the Maltese police said: "On June 17th, 2007 the Malta police were in receipt of a report of a sighting of a girl who resembled Madeleine McCann.
"Subsequent to this report, a full scale police investigation and a magisterial inquiry were initiated," he added.
A Maltese newspaper also cited two tourists who claimed that they had seen a girl matching the four-year-old's description in Valetta.
Ray Roberts is one of the people who reported seeing Madeleine. He claims to have seen a girl with jet black hair that was "very thick and cut in an unusual style for a child that age".
He added that the girl was being told to get up by a man in his 40s. A woman was by the man's side at the time.
Mr Roberts said: "It was obviously not his first language so it seemed odd that he had to speak to her in English," he said. "As a father, their reaction did not seem natural."
"The more I think about what I saw, the more convinced I became that it may well have been Maddie.
"The oddness of it all played out in my mind until I got home then I realised I had to do something."
A spokeswoman for Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, has said that they were not taking the claims too seriously as there have been numerous reports of sightings.
"Until they hear that something has been checked out and there is a resolution of the piece of information one way or the other and that comes from an official source they are not going to focus on it," she said.
She added that they were focusing on spreading awareness of her disappearance by releasing balloons in 50 countries to show that it has been fifty days since her disappearance on May 3rd.
The parents of the missing girl will launch the new phase of their campaign to find their child at the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz, where she went missing, by releasing 50 yellow helium-filled balloons.