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Friday 16 November 2007

I DID see Madeleine being abducted,' insists Tapas Nine friend

Daily Mail Headline; says: 'A friend of Kate and Gerry McCann finally broke her silence yesterday to tell of the "absolute horror" that haunts her over the night Madeleine disappeared. Key witness Jane Tanner saw a dark-haired man carrying away a child wearing pink floral pyjamas about the time that the four-year-old vanished from her parents' holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal. But it was only an hour later, when she was told that Madeleine had gone, that Miss Tanner realised it could have been the abductor.

She has been "tormented" ever since that she did not immediately realise the significance of what she had seen.

Miss Tanner, a 38-year-old marketing executive, is the first of the "Tapas Nine" - the group of friends who formed a dinner party with the McCanns on the night of May 3 at a restaurant in the Algarve holiday complex - to speak publicly. She made her decision, six months after Madeleine's disappearance, because of her growing frustration about smears against her and the other friends. Last night Portuguese police warned she risked a two-year jail sentence by speaking out. As a witness, she is bound by the same strict secrecy laws which forbid Madeleine's parents from talking about the events of May 3.

Legal sources said her decision was a "calculated risk", and that she was unlikely to face prosecution.