Mail Online: 'I saw girl who looked like Maddie on tram in Brussels

I saw girl who looked like Maddie on tram in Brussels': New sighting as McCanns' detectives focus on Belgium
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
UPDATED: 12:30, 25 April 2013


A Belgian woman has spoken of the moment she spotted a child who looked like Madeleine McCann in Brussels just days after she went missing.

Line Compere recounted how she saw the girl with an Eastern European couple on a tram heading for the city's train station.

Her sighting was one of several potential leads revealed in the Portuguese police case files. Detectives are now looking at more than 100 in Belgium alone.

Miss Compere, 31, spoke out again yesterday after it emerged British police were tipped-off Madeleine may have been snatched for a paedophile ring in Belgium.

'I made the sighting on a tram. We were on the Number 18 tram from Porte d'Anderlecht going towards the Gare du Midi,' she said.

'They got off and then got on to the number 51 tram. She really looked like Madeleine, but her hair was different.

'In the photos I saw of Madeleine, she had a fringe, but this girl did not. She was dressed all in pink and was in a pushchair.

'I was standing close to her and saw her eyes - they were blue. But I did not notice any marking on her eye.

'She was with a man and a woman, both between 35 and 40 years old. They were white but had dark hair and looked Eastern European.

'They were both dressed in dark clothes. The girl looked very different to the adults.'

She added: 'I was interviewed once by Belgian police who launched an inquiry, and I gave them all the details I knew.'

The report was passed on to the Portuguese police but it is unclear what action was taken to follow it up.

According to the Portuguese police case files, Ms Compere said she saw the girl 12 days after Madeleine disappeared in Praia da Luz on May 3 last year.

She was suspicious because the couple with the youngster did not look like her, appeared to be speaking a different language and did not seem to know her well.

At the time, she had never seen a picture of Madeleine but later that day was shown a photograph of the missing girl and was struck by the similarity, according to the files.

In her interview on June 1 last year, she told police: 'When I saw the photo in question, it immediately jumped out to me that there was a big resemblance to the little girl on the tram.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1042818/I-saw-girl-looked-like-Maddie-tram-Brussels-New-sighting-McCanns-detectives-focus-Belgium.html

So the standard "1-5 year gap" before the daily mail report by un-named reporter.

I am sure i saw Maddie at a school sports day, blonde hair to shoulders, running around with all the other blonde haired girls, but i'm sure it was her!

I'm chomping at the bit to report to police but can't............ because my sighting was only 2 years ago.!!

Sighting - Brussels, "just days after she went missing" - check, but hardly "new" sighting.

"Eastern European couple" - but were they swarthy? - no they were white but "looked" Eastern European.

"Pushchair"?? I don't think it is common to see four year olds in pushchairs.

Just curious, does the Mail pay for "sighting" interviews?

As we all said, there will be an 'anniversary' sighting. mc haven't let us down. McCircus must go on.

12 days is awfully quick to grow out fringe! With all the pseudo sightings, this was the best they could come up with? Surely this sighting would have been followed up by the Belgium police rather than the PJ, as the PJ did not have the resources to run all over the world chasing down every single girl who vaguely fit Madeleine's description.

Someone sent me a PM about this or I'd never have seen it. It seems to be buried in the depths of the Mail Online. Not with their front page news.

Just seen on Twitter that this has been around for years. I found it, though, by putting "Madeleine McCann" into search and choosing "Most recent" It states it's been updated this week. The question is why? No other sighting being reported, so dig up an old one?

wow desparate measures indeed -

AnnaEsse wrote:Just seen on Twitter that this has been around for years. I found it, though, by putting "Madeleine McCann" into search and choosing "Most recent" It states it's been updated this week. The question is why? No other sighting being reported, so dig up an old one?

Yep, it's old. Date changed...and we have an anniversary sighting. Pathetic.

I suppose the idea is to convey the initial impression that it's a new sighting - new in a McCann context meaning anything from a few weeks to a year - but surely one of those could have been dreamed up instead.

Well we had the 'I-forgive-the-abductor-but-apparently-not-the-dissenters' rubbish.
That went down like a lead balloon.

And the 'I've-had-death-threats-from-internet-trolls-and-I-fear-for-the-twins'-lives-but-I've-started-leaving-them-in-the-car-at-petrol-stations' load of old pony.
That was exposed as the pretzel logic duplicity it so obviously was.

Plus the fact that Madam's 'heroic' running display hardly merited a mention in the press.
That must have put a certain narcissistic neb out of joint.

So Team McCann were presumably running on empty by now.
Hence this regurgitated sighting from their Wayback Machine.
NEXT!!!

Sigh. Shame on the newspapers for printing such twaddle - and we can't even wrap our chips in it now can we.

Excellent though for wrapping disposable nappies in - both full of the same thing!

'I was standing close to her and saw her eyes - they were blue. But I did not notice any marking on her eye."

EYES "THEY WERE BLUE"???!

Full name: Madeleine Beth McCann
Date of birth: 12/05/2003
Place of birth: Leicester, United Kingdom
Height: 90 cm
Eyes: Left eye: blue and green; right eye: green with a brown spot on the iris
Hair: Straight blond hair

http://www.mccannfiles.com/imagelib/sitebuilder/misc/show_image.html?linkedwidth=actual&linkpath=http://www.mccannfiles.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/pjsitemaddie.jpg&target=tlx_picpb55

Shoulda gone to specsavers!

All very predictable. Rehash an old sighting close to the anniversary. Yawn..........

Oh, dear G*d!

Perhaps the UN-NAMED reporter at the Mail was working at the Sun in 2008.

Or perhaps just a tea leaf who has nicked the old article, re-jigged it, and claimed his/her investigative 'skills' in this 'new' sighting as a brilliant new report!

NO sightings are worth anything, are they? Someone says a person looks like someone else. So what? It means nothing. It's an opinion and no more. Why do the newspapers run with this idiocy? Answer: to increase circulation by featuring the name of Madeleine, a picture of her, or pictures of her parents. BONKERS! Is it all tongue in cheek on the press's behalf? Surely readers don't believe it either. There are not enough silly fools in tabloid readership. There can't be.

Not Born Yesterday wrote:Excellent though for wrapping disposable nappies in - both full of the same thing!

Nicely put, NBY.

jeanmonroe wrote:Perhaps the UN-NAMED reporter at the Mail was working at the Sun in 2008.

Or perhaps just a tea leaf who has nicked the old article, re-jigged it, and claimed his/her investigative 'skills' in this 'new' sighting as a brilliant new report!

The perfect description of a pink shirted ambulance chasing liar, known and beloved by us all....