McCanns plan Maddie ad campaign

THE family of Madeleine McCann is to launch an advertising campaign to help find the missing four-year-old, it was announced yesterday.

Up to £80,000 will be drawn from the fighting fund set up to search for the Leicestershire youngster and spent on newspaper, television and billboard adverts.

Made formal suspects in the disappearance, Gerry and Kate McCann are keen to keep the focus on finding their daughter. The campaign, set to launch in two weeks, was announced at a media conference in their home village of Rothley.

In a statement issued through a spokeswoman for the family, Gerry McCann's brother and fund director, John McCann, said: "On behalf of the extended McCann family and the Madeleine fund, I would just like to say how grateful we are for people's generosity and support.

"The main objective of the Madeleine fund is to leave no stone unturned in the search for Madeleine. To that end, I would like to announce that the fund will finance a broad range of initiatives in advertising to remind everyone that Madeleine is still missing."

McCann said the adverts would focus on Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe and would consist of billboards and other media.

He added: "This financing of advertisements will complement previous efforts by the fund and many motivated individuals - family, friends and people touched by our cause.

"I hope that the general public will continue to support us in this. It is so important that we remember - 'Don't you forget about me' - our lovely wee Madeleine."

The announcement comes after the family said last week that it would not spend proceeds from the fund on the McCanns' legal costs.

Up to 1,000 items of mail are being sent to the family home every day - but just one or two are "crank letters", a family spokeswoman said.

The couple have been inundated with post since they returned from Portugal. The spokeswoman said: "There's been a huge level of support for the family. There have been between 500 and 1,000 letters, cards, flowers, all sorts of messages of support being sent through to them.

"The level of support has been increasing this week. More and more are addressed directly to Gerry and Kate. Many are from people who have said, 'I would not usually be moved to write but I felt moved by the recent coverage'."

Yesterday, two of Kate McCann's closest friends dismissed claims she could have had anything to do with her daughter's disappearance and praised her as a devoted mother.

Linda McQueen, 45, and Nicky Gill, 39, have been friends with Kate since she was a child and have kept in close touch with her now that they are all parents.

The pair both travelled to London specifically to speak out about Kate and defend her against allegations about her ability as a mother and her role in Madeleine's disappearance.

McQueen denied her childhood friend could have harmed her daughter in any way. Asked if she had ever questioned Kate McCann's innocence for a second, she said: "No, not at all, not a shadow of a doubt from anybody at all, ever. They are the most loving, caring, family-oriented couple that you could ever meet."

"They are absolutely fabulous. Those three children are the world to them, as our children are to them as well."

Both are desperate to describe the Kate they know, and have been friends with for decades.

Ms Gill said: "I want people to know who Kate is and what she is like.

"People don't know, they don't know Kate so they won't know. To have these words said about her is just so unfair and hurtful. They just do not deserve it whatsoever."

McQueen said "only a very small minority of people" doubted the McCanns. She said: "The wealth of support we have had in the past week from all angles of the campaign has shown that the majority are sticking with us and keeping everybody, and Madeleine in particular, in their prayers."

Despite the blitz of positive publicity, Kate McCann could be re-interviewed this week by British police acting for the Portuguese authorities, it was reported yesterday.

The judge in the case has authorised a fresh interrogation, expected to take place in the UK on Tuesday or Wednesday, according to Portugal's Diario de Noticias newspaper.

About 40 questions that Madeleine's mother previously refused to answer in interviews in Portugal have been sent to British police via Europol, the paper said.

A UK police source said it would be "unusual" for British officers to carry out interviews on behalf of a foreign police force but stressed "anything is possible" in a major inquiry.

It is more common for officers from other countries to visit Britain to question witnesses or suspects in person with the assistance of the local force.

The source said: "We do carry out inquiries on behalf of other forces, but it's usually relatively informal.

"If it's a serious offence, they normally come over and do it themselves, and we facilitate it - it's normally a formal thing through Interpol and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office." The source continued: "When a serious crime occurs, like this, the police forces facilitate each other.

"With things that might have been unusual before, I think they would attempt to find a way around it."

Attention has focused on what police found in the hire car rented by Madeleine's parents 25 days after she went missing.

Senior sources linked to the investigation said police had discovered "bodily fluids" - not blood - with an 88% match to Madeleine's genetic profile in the boot of the silver Renault Scenic.

The family drove 2,750km (1,708 miles) in the hire car in the period to July 3, the Portuguese Correio da Manha newspaper reported yesterday.

It is not known how far they drove in it between that date and their return to the UK last Sunday, the paper said.

The Diario de Noticias reported that police are waiting for permission from a judge to seize and dismantle the car so they can search for "traces of skin".

The spokesman for Portuguese police in the inquiry, Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa, is understood to have been taken off the case, and nobody else was available for comment today.

But Gerry McCann's brother, John, used an interview yesterday to attack several rumours that have regularly been repeated in the Portuguese press.

He also revealed that Kate McCann started a diary after her daughter went missing on the advice of a British psychologist, and attacked leaks to Portuguese newspapers.

The diary is among a number of personal items prosecutors want from the young girl's parents, sources close to the investigation said.

One Portuguese newspaper has reported that the diary documents Mrs McCann's struggles to look after her "hysterical" children.

Kate McCann was frequently seen writing her journal in private after Madeleine went missing from the family's holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3.

John McCann told Portugal's weekly Expresso newspaper: "It was a way of writing what she felt, of putting her emotions on paper. I don't know the contents of her outpourings.

"What most intrigues me is the fact that they were transcribed by some papers. It makes no sense. If in Portugal there is 'secrecy of justice', who is passing so much information to the outside?"

He said it was "complete rubbish" to suggest the McCanns telephoned Sky News before contacting Portuguese police on the night Madeleine vanished. And he said reports that the McCanns and their seven friends had consumed 14 bottles of wine in a tapas restaurant that evening were "absolutely false".