THE parents of Madeleine McCann will have to wait several weeks to find out test results on materials gathered during a recent search for their missing daughter, German authorities have said.
Police were scouring the remote Barragem do Arade reservoir in the Algarve, Portugal last week - around 35 miles from where the then-three-year-old went missing in 2007 - while on a family holiday in Praia da Luz.
As police concluded their three-day hunt for evidence on Thursday, they confirmed “materials collected” had been sent to Germany for analysis.
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But German authorities have told the BBC that Kate and Gerry McCann will have to wait several weeks before they find out the results.
Speaking to the BBC, German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said investigators had good reasons for searching the reservoir and that other searches had also been carried out elsewhere.
During last week’s search, police flattened a concentrated area of woodland and dug a number of holes near the reservoir.
Police were given permission to search the area after German prosecutors received “certain tips” about the case.
Already in prison for the rape of a woman in Praia da Luz in 2005, Brueckner - who denies any involvement in the toddler’s disappearance - is also suspected of further rapes and child sexual abuse in the area between 2000 and 2017.
Although German authorities have not revealed the source of their tip-off, the German public broadcaster NDR said the new information had not come from the suspect, that he had not made any confession or given any indication of where police should search.
