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THE parents of Madeleine McCann faced further heartache last night when a
possible sighting of their daughter in the Balkans was officially ruled out.
Hopes were raised when a tourist from Northern
Ireland spotted a blonde child being pushed into a car at
a Catholic shrine in Medjugorje, Bosnia.
The father of six from Fermanagh in Northern Ireland told police he was
99.9 per cent certain the little girl was Madeleine after he heard her cry out
in English: “I want my daddy.”
But last night local detectives tracked the child down and confirmed she was
the three and a half year old daughter of a Bosnian local. It is the latest
reported sighting of Madeleine, who went missing on May 3 from a holiday
apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, to have drawn a blank.
The man was so convinced of the identity of the little girl he attempted to
approach her and the two adults who accompanied her. But before he was able to
speak to them the little girl was pushed into a black Volkswagen Golf and
driven away.
He managed to take down the number plate and it was through this information
that the police were able to track down the family involved.
Detectives traced the car back to local man Slavko Dedic, who had lent it to his son to travel to the area to pray
with his family at the world famous shrine. Bosnian police spokesman Srecko Bosnjak said last night
that the family and little girl had been eliminated from their enquiries.
He said: “We have found the owner of the VW Golf with Bosnia and
Herzegovinian car plates. The car and occupants were just as described by the
Irish pilgrim to the private investigators of the McCann family, with one exception, the little girl was not Madeleine McCann.
“The owner of the car, Slavko Dedic,
who lives nearby in the southern town of Ljubuski confirmed the car was his
and had been lent to his son Alen, who was in Medjugorje on November 1st. He was there with his daughter
Tea who is very much like Maddie McCann.”
Alen Dedic said: “I am
sorry that the family had to go through this but my daughter is nothing to do
with the case. She is three-and-a-half years old and is very hyperactive and
was a bit out of control when we were in Medjugorje.
I really had to push her into the car on November 1st in Medjugorje
when we went there to pray.
“To be honest I had seen that people leaving the church were staring at her
behaving badly and I was very embarrassed, I just wanted to get out of there. I
did not dream I would create such a fuss.”
In August, detectives in Belgium
launched a nationwide search hunt after a child therapist said she was certain
she had seen Madeleine in a roadside cafe with a suspicious looking couple.
However it turned out to be a false alarm when the youngster was tracked down
and found to be the daughter of a local.
And last month, the focus switched to Morocco when a tourist took a
photograph of a blonde child in a remote part of the country. Again the trail
went cold when the child was found to be the daughter of an olive farmer.
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