MADDY SUSPECT RELEASED

Police last night released the official suspect in the search for Madeleine McCann.

Briton Robert Murat spent eight hours with Portuguese police being questioned by detectives hunting the missing four-year-old, from Rothley.

Murat was questioned by police in the town of Portimao.

It is understood detectives wanted Mr Murat to clarify various details from his previous statements.

According to Portuguese newspaper 24 Horas, authorities discovered an e-mail on his computer which referred to an English child.

Although Mr Murat has been released, he remains a formal suspect, say police.

Tuck Price, a family friend who lives in the Algarve, said Mr Murat was called in to have a "chat", and that he went in "on his own accord".

He said: "We all knew that he would be re-questioned at some point.

"Hopefully it is the beginning of the end for him. They just called and asked him to come in to have a chat, he wasn't arrested or anything like that."

The 33-year-old property developer was first questioned less than two weeks after Madeleine vanished from her holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, on May 3.