Police identify suspect in Madeleine kidnapping

By Carlos Pontes

PRAIA DA LUZ, Portugal (Reuters) - Portuguese police have identified a suspect in their investigation of the kidnapping of four-year-old Madeleine McCann but do not have enough evidence for an arrest, police said on Tuesday.

Police were following a strong lead to find McCann, who disappeared 12 days ago from her bedroom in a resort hotel in the Algarve, they said.

"The judicial police continue to follow the strongest lead and we hope that in the short term there will be more developments," chief inspector Olegario Sousa told a news conference.

Police searched a villa on Monday close to the complex from where Madeleine went missing more than a week ago and took a British man, Robert Murat, away for questioning. Police returned to the villa on Tuesday.

Sousa did not identify the suspect but said he was a 33-year-old who lived in the area.

"The evidence collected is being analysed and we hope it will shed more light on the investigation," Sousa said. "A criminal investigation is very dynamic and at any time it can show up new facts."

A total of five properties in the area were searched and two other people had been questioned as witnesses in what Sousa called the investigation's strongest lead. He said it centred on the area of Praia da Luz itself.

Murat often spoke to reporters in the days just after the disappearance of Madeleine, saying she looked like his daughter in England. His mother's house, 'Casa Liliana', is about 150 metres from the resort apartment where the McCann family was staying when their daughter disappeared.