LONDON (AFP) — Police do not suspect the parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann were involved in her disappearance, the couple's spokesman said on Wednesday.
During a debate on media coverage of the child's disappearance, Clarence Mitchell told a packed theatre at the London School of Economics that officials, whom he did not identify, had told him in private briefings that the case was being treated as a "rare stranger abduction".
"I have also had briefings privately from the police and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre that also gave me complete reassurance that the authorities, in this country certainly, are treating this as a case of rare stranger abduction, as they call it," he said.
Madeleine McCann went missing from the resort of Praia da Luz in Portugal's Algarve region last May, and her parents, Gerry and Kate, launched a high-profile international campaign to find her after she vanished from their holiday apartment shortly before her fourth birthday.
They were named as formal suspects in the case by Portuguese police in September but returned to their home in Britain shortly afterwards.
Earlier this month, they urged a worldwide search for someone they believe could provide a link to the girl's disappearance, releasing detailed images of the man who was seen by a British witness close to where Madeleine went missing.
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