Parents of missing three-year-old issue plea to 'abductors'

The parents of the three-year-old girl who went missing from a Portuguese holiday apartment tonight made a heartfelt plea urging her abductors to return her to her family.

Gerry and Kate McCann begged for the safe return of their daughter, Madeleine, as the frantic search to find her continued.

She was last seen sleeping soundly by her father at around 9pm on Thursday night at the Ocean Club resort in the seaside village of Praia Da Luz in the south-western Algarve.

But at 10pm when her mother Kate went to check on her, she found the shutter slid up, the bedroom window open and her daughter gone.

Mr McCann tonight read out a brief statement, with his wife at his side, pleading with the abductors to release the three-year-old - described as "happy-go-lucky" - back to her family.

With the emotion audible in his voice, he said: "We cannot describe the anguish and despair we are feeling as parents of our beautiful daughter Madeleine.

"We request that anyone with any information relating to Madeleine's disappearance, no matter how trivial, contact the Portuguese police and help us get her back safely."

He then directly addressed anyone who might be holding his daughter, saying: "Please, if you have Madeleine, let her come home to her Mummy, Daddy, brother and sister."

He also asked that the family's privacy be respected so that they can do as much as possible to help the police investigation into their daughter's disappearance.

"Everyone can understand how distressing the current situation is. We ask that our privacy is respected to allow us to continue assisting the police in their investigation," he said.

Fellow holidaymakers, staff from British travel firm Mark Warner, which has run the resort for two years, and police spent most of Thursday night searching for the child, who turns four next Friday.

Dogs were brought in, the Spanish border police and airports were notified and volunteer teams continued to comb the area today for clues as to the little girl's whereabouts.

It is now feared she was taken against her will and her anguished parents, both 38 and doctors, have accused Portuguese police of not doing enough to find her.

Madeleine and her two-year-old twin brother and sister Sean and Amelie were left in their apartment alone as their parents dined at the tapas restaurant 200 yards away.

The resort offered a creche service but the couple opted to leave the children sleeping at the apartment, taking turns to check on them at regular intervals.

Madeleine's aunt, Trish Cameron, who lives in Dumbarton near Glasgow, described how her brother, Gerry, had called her last night "breaking his heart".

She said his wife had gone to check on the children and "came out screaming".

"He said 'Madeleine's been abducted, she's been abducted'," she told the Press Association.

"The door was lying open, the window in the bedroom and the shutters had been jemmied open.

"Nothing had been touched in the apartment, no valuables taken, no passports. They think someone must have come in the window and gone out the door with her."

Mrs Cameron, described Madeleine as a "lovely wee girl".

She said: "She has a broad English accent, loves going to nursery and her swimming and tennis lessons."

She was due to arrive in Portugal tonight along with her mother, who is from Manchester, and Mrs McCann's parents Mr and Mrs Healy.

Speaking at the door of the family home in Mossley Hill, Liverpool, before setting off, Madeleine's grandfather Brian Healy said: "It's a very distressing time."

Mr McCann is a consultant cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester and Mrs McCann, from Liverpool, is a GP in Latham House Medical Practice in Melton Mowbray.

Neighbours near the family home in Rothley, Leicestershire, to which they are thought to have moved from Queniborough last summer, were stunned by the news.

One, Penny Noble, said she believed Madeleine was due to start at school in September.

She said: "They are a really nice family and good neighbours.

"They are delightful. We see them take their bikes up and down and going for walks.

"Madeleine is a very happy-go-lucky little girl."

Another neighbour Tracey Horsfield, a nurse, said: "They seem a really lovely family. I see them going up and down the crescent. They are a protective family who idolise their kids.

"I am hoping and praying that she has not been abducted and that she has wandered off. They would not let her out of their sight."

The British Ambassador to Portugal, John Stephen Buck, was also due to arrive in the Algarve tonight, as were Mark Warner UK Operations Director Craig Mayhew and a counsellor.

Copyright Press Association 2007.

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