PORTUGAL:Police in southern Spain arrested two people yesterday, apparently in connection with the investigation into the missing British toddler Madeleine McCann, it was reported last night.
According to the Spanish newspaper El País, an Italian man was detained by specialist anti-kidnap police in the town of Sotogrande, close to Gibraltar, early yesterday. The paper said the man was being held on suspicion of a possible extortion plot against the family of the child, who disappeared on May 3rd from a holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz.
The suspect was apparently arrested after an international warrant was issued by the French authorities, but Spanish police said: "We are investigating whether this is linked to Madeleine's disappearance."
French police refused to comment on the reports, referring inquiries back to Spanish and Italian authorities.
Chief Insp Olegario Sousa, the Portuguese officer leading the investigation in the Algarve, said that two people were arrested in the operation. Portuguese officers had been called in by their Spanish counterparts to assist in an operation in Spain that began early yesterday, he said, adding that he could not yet confirm whether the arrests were directly linked to Madeleine's disappearance. Other sources suggested the second person arrested was a Portuguese woman, but Mr Sousa would not confirm this.
The reported arrests, 56 days after Madeleine's disappearance, could be the most significant breakthrough in some weeks in the kidnap investigation.
The only other person to have been arrested in connection with the case is Robert Murat, a British man who lives in Praia da Luz.
Mr Murat's house was searched and he was questioned at length but was not charged. Madeleine was four days short of her fourth birthday when she vanished from the bedroom of her parents' holiday apartment while they ate dinner in a nearby restaurant.
She was apparently taken from her bedroom while her two-year-old twin siblings slept beside her.
Despite a huge search in the nearby area during the days following the disappearance, and an energetic publicity operation which has seen posters of the missing child distributed throughout Europe and north Africa, there have been no confirmed sightings since she disappeared.
Last night John McCann, the brother of Madeleine's father Gerry McCann, said he had not yet been given information relating to the arrest.
"We have no comment to make, because we know no more than we have seen on the news," he said. -