KEY POINTS:
The search for Madeleine McCann gained fresh momentum today as it emerged a mystery caller claiming to know what had happened to the missing girl was deemed by British Police to be so "credible" that they prepared her parents for the prospect of speaking to him.
Kate and
Gerry McCann delayed their flight from Berlin's Tempelhof Airport to Amsterdam on Wednesday afternoon after the anonymous call and spent an agonising three hours at the British Embassy in Berlin while officers attempted to re-establish with the man.
His call was traced to an unregistered pay-as-you-go phone from a country outside Europe.
An emergency contingency plan was also drawn up, which involved the McCanns flying back to their local East Midlands airport and being met by a specialist team of advisers to oversee their talks with the source.
But efforts to re-establish contact with the caller failed and the McCanns were finally advised to proceed to Amsterdam as planned.
They left for Amsterdam's Schipol Airport three hours late, at 7.30pm on Wednesday.
The nationality of the caller was not clear but his call is believed to have been received by police in Spain.
The call is not thought to have been made from Morocco, where a previous possible sighting of Madeleine was reported.
The drama occurred a few hours after the McCanns were forced by a German journalist into an emotional denial of suggestions that they might have had a hand in their daughter's abduction.
After the call was received, the couple were asked if they were prepared to speak to the man after he told police that he wanted to talk to them directly.
It is unclear what information he provided which convinced British liaison officers working with Portuguese police that he was significant.
For the McCanns, contacted by police at 3pm, it seemed like the moment they had been waiting for since their four-year-old daughter disappeared from her bedroom in ground floor holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz, five weeks ago.
A Spanish police source said yesterday: "A man called saying he knew where Madeleine was and wanted to speak to the McCanns.
This did not appear to be a prank call and the information was felt credible enough to warrant the couple being informed immediately." Portuguese police refused to comment.
The Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, claimed today that it had located a man who matched the description of the person who was seen carrying Madeleine away from their apartment in the Mark Warner Ocean Club.
The paper said that the man, who has been jailed abroad for a paedophile offence, had told friends that he was going to the Algarve a week before Madeleine disappeared.
It suggested that Madeleine had been identified for abduction some time before she went missing, and that she had been kidnapped by an international paedophile network.
Meanwhile, the McCanns were in Amsterdam for the first time since 2004, when they lived in the city for a year.
Holding a poster of their daughter at another packed press conference, Mr McCann said that the last week of tours had targeted countries which have large numbers of tourists in the Algarve: "We are not going to go to every country in Europe," he said.
"We are not selling a book, we are not pop stars, we have come here for a very specific reason." Mrs McCann, 38, said: "We are amateurs in this.
There are very few people who will have to go through anything as painful as this." The McCanns have now concluded the European section of their search for their daughter, which has taken them to Italy, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands.
They plan to go to Morocco this weekend.
- INDEPENDENT
