The parents, family and friends of Madeleine McCann who went missing in Portugal marked the 16th 'anniversary' of her disappearance yesterday in a memorial ceremony in their village, Rothley, Leicestershire.
About 70 people attended the memorial ceremony led by the local parish priest, where people offered prayers and lit candles in Maddie's memory.
Kate’s close friend Fiona Payne, one of her "Tapas Seven” pals who was on the fateful holiday in Portugal when three-year-old Maddie vanished in 2007, was among the crowd.
Maddie's sister, Amelie, who is now 18 years old, spoke for the first time in public about the tragedy: "It's a sad occasion," she said. Her brother Sean was not present at the memorial.
After 16 years and almost 15 million euros spent – an amount that the British Government has already allocated for the searches to continue –, British investigators still have not provided any clue as to what happened on May 3, 2007.
German police are convinced Maddie is dead and have been intent on charging prime suspect Christian Brueckner with her kidnap and “no body” murder. But it recently emerged that the convicted paedophile may never face a trial in the high profile Maddie case, or with unrelated alleged sex offences, because of a legal technicality over foreign courts' jurisdiction.
Brueckner, 45, is currently serving a sentence in a German jail for the rape of an American tourist in the same Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz where Maddie vanished from in May 2007. He has fiercely denied any involvement in her abduction.
Kate and Gerry cling onto a glimmer of hope that Maddie, who would now be aged 19, nearly 20, could still be alive.
