British police and child protection officers do not suspect Madeleine McCann’s parents of involvement in her disappearance, the couple’s spokesman said. (The Sun Thursday 31st January 2008)
Clarence Mitchell said officials had assured him in private briefings that they were treating the case as one of “rare stranger abduction”.
Speaking at a debate on The McCanns and the Media at the London School of Economics, Mr Mitchell said he was completely convinced of their innocence.
He told a packed theatre: “I have never once seen or heard anything from either of them to give me any cause for suspicion in any shape or form.
“I have also had briefings privately from the police and who 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.”
Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie, another panel member at the debate, said the McCann story was “the most significant story in my lifetime”.
He went on: “Without the finding of the child this story is going to be in all our lives forever.