Did Madeleine's kidnapper try to snatch another girl? Photo / AP
Did Madeleine's kidnapper try to snatch another girl? Photo / AP
A Spanish man claims a man matching the e-fit released of Madeleine McCann's suspected kidnapper tried to snatch his daughter from a Portuguese hotel.
The father, named only as Andrés, says the man entered the room where his daughters, aged five and 13, slept during a holiday in 2001, reportsThe Daily Mail.
When the e-fit was released in 2013, he instantly recognized it as the man who had come into his daughters' hotel room 12 years earlier.
"I don't know if that man kidnapped Madeleine, but for me he is the man who tried to take my daughter," he told La Voz de Galicia.
Four-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from a hotel room in Praia da Luz, Portugal, while her parents Gerry and Kate McCann were out having dinner in May, 2007.
Despite an 11-year international search, neither Madeleine nor her alleged kidnapper has been found.
e-fit photo relseased by the Metropolitan Police in London 13 October 2013 of a man wanted in connection witht he disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Photo / Getty Images
Andrés, 45, from the autonomous Spanish region of Galicia, told a local newspaper the incident six years earlier still affects him.
The family had been driving through Portugal and ended up having to stay the night in a small hotel in the city of Abrantes.
He told La Voz de Galicia that a man in his mid-40s complimented him and his wife on their 'beautiful girls' as they arrived at the hotel.
The family were split into two rooms, and he claims they and the other man were the only guests there that night.
In the middle of the night, he says his oldest daughter called their room asking him if he had just been in there.
As this was not the case, he went over to reassure them, and ended up staying in case the man would return, which he says he did a few minutes later.
When he confronted the man, he simply replied that "he had come to check on the children".
"Even today, I don't know how he managed to escape me, he slipped like an eel," he told the website.
He added that when he complained to reception, they were told the man was "a regular guest who likes children but doesn't hurt them," according to The Local.
Despite being interviewed by both Spanish police and Scotland Yard, Andres says he has never heard anything back from either force about the case.
