Two held in Madeleine case quizzed for extortion
Madeleine McCann was abducted on May 3rd
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Friday, 29, Jun 2007 09:08
An Italian man and a Portuguese woman are being quizzed by police in connection to an alleged attempt to extort £2.5 million from the parents of missing Madeleine McCann in exchange for information about her.
However the police have dismissed claims that the couple were involved in Madeleine's disappearance.
"Police began to investigate them after getting information that they had tried to contact Madeleine's parents to collect a reward," the Spanish police said in a statement.
The pair were arrested in the town of Sotogrande yesterday morning on the suspicion that they were linked to the four-year-old's kidnapping.
Police added that the man was arrested after an international arrest warrant was issued. The woman was arrested on suspicion of association.
The Italian suspect has served an 18-month sentence in a French jail for mistreating his own daughter.
A spokeswoman for the McCanns said the family would not comment directly on the developments and would wait for the Portuguese police to inform them about the situation.
Madeleine's father, Gerry McCann, wrote in his blog on findmadeleine.com that there had been "a lot of media publicity" over the arrests in Spain which he saw as a signal that the police were treating information regarding her disappearance "very seriously".
Last week, reported sightings of Madeleine in Malta proved fruitless. She has not been seen since going missing from the Algarve resort where her family were staying on May 3rd despite a major search operation across Europe.