Police Leaving no stone unturned in search of Madeleine

PRAIA DA LUZ, Portugal -- Portuguese police and British detectives returned yesterday to search the home of the only suspect in the disappearance of a 4-year-old British girl who went missing at a resort hotel in Portugal three months ago.

Using rakes and hedge cutters, police cleared vegetation from the grounds of the house where 33-year-old Briton Robert Murat lives, which is about 100 metres from where Madeleine McCann was last seen.

At least eight Portuguese officers and two British detectives were seen taking part in the search, entering the house around 7 a.m. The British Broadcasting Corp. said the search was expected to last four days.

Portuguese police were not immediately available for comment.

NOT ARRESTED

Murat was in the house with his lawyer at the time. He was not arrested. Murat has always denied any involvement in the girl's disappearance.

The search came a day after Belgian authorities said they were investigating a reported sighting of the girl in Tongeren, an eastern Belgian town near the Dutch border. Police issued a drawing of a Dutch-speaking man reportedly seen with the girl and an English-speaking woman at a table outside a pub there.

Madeleine vanished May 3 after her parents left her and her 2-year-old twin siblings in their room while they went to a restaurant inside their hotel complex in Praia da Luz, a resort town in Portugal's Algarve region.

Her disappearance prompted an international search, and her parents have publicized the effort.