Madeleine: UK Police Fly Home From Portugal

British police have left Portugal after liaising with local officers investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

A Scotland Yard team flew to the Algarve after British authorities sent a letter to Portuguese police requesting help with tracking down and interviewing three burglars who were in the area when Madeleine vanished.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, who is leading the investigation for the Metropolitan Police, was pictured arriving in Faro with three colleagues.

They held meetings with senior members of Portugal's Policia Judiciaria and are believed to have discussed leads recently identified by the Operation Grange investigation team in the UK.

On Wednesday afternoon the officers were pictured at the airport heading back to the UK.

Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said the letter requesting help from the Portuguese authorities is understood to have arrived in Portugal in the last couple of days.

He said: "Four detectives from Scotland Yard arrived to meet their Portuguese colleagues - there's a small team of Portuguese police working in the Algarve on behalf of Scotland Yard.

"It's certainly not the first time Scotland Yard detectives have visited Portugal - more than a dozen times in the last two years since Scotland Yard have been reviewing and then investigating Madeleine's disappearance has such a team gone to liaise.

"But it could be of some big significance because we know that earlier this month the UK authorities sent what's known as an international letter of request to the Portuguese authorities seeking, we think, help in interviewing three potential suspects."

Earlier this month, Sky News reported that a police team were hunting three men whose phones were "red hot" after Madeleine went missing from her family's Praia da Luz apartment in May 2007.

Mobile phone records show that the men made numerous calls to each other in the hours after Kate and Gerry McCann discovered their daughter - three years old at the time - had disappeared from her room.

No arrests have been made since the Met set up Operation Grange in 2011 to review the case.

Portuguese police reopened their investigation last year, more than three years after it had been shelved.

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