Portugal police hand Madeleine file to prosecutor

LISBON, Sep 11 (Reuters) Portuguese police delivered case files on missing 4-year-old Madeleine McCann to the public prosecutor today, local media said, and he will decide whether to charge her parents with involvement in the crime.

Gerry and Kate McCann left for Britain on Sunday after they became suspects in Madeleine's disappearance on May 3 from a hotel room in an Algarve resort while they were dining nearby.

They have denied any involvement. Relatives have said they would return to Portugal if required by police.

''The information I have is that the file would be delivered today but I can't confirm,'' police spokesman Olegario de Sousa said.

A spokeswoman at the prosecutor's office would not comment on whether the file had arrived. He said the prosecutor would issue a statement on the case yesterday.

The file includes forensic results of evidence taken from various sites in the Praia da Luz resort where Madeleine vanished and details of police interviews with the McCanns. They were both interviewed for several hours last week.

The forensic evidence may clear up whether Madeleine's DNA was found in a car hired by the McCanns after she disappeared. Alipio Ribeiro, head of the judicial police investigating the case, said that evidence was not conclusive.

''Various analyses were received but none of those tests are that exact, (giving 100 percent certainty) so in other words we cannot say that blood belongs to A or B,'' he told RTP television in an interview late on Monday.

Facing criticism that the investigation has been too slow, Portuguese Justice Minister Alberto Costa said the police force was ''investigating with all its competence and with all necessary resources'', he was quoted as saying by TSF radio.

''I have full confidence in the police,'' he said.

After their daughter's disappearance, the McCanns launched a high-profile publicity campaign across Europe to try to find her. Police have said they believed the little girl is dead.

The prosecutor will decide if there is sufficient evidence to impose new conditions on the McCanns or even charge them with involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.

He could also decide there is insufficient evidence to do anything and may ask police investigators to find more evidence.

With Portugal's slow-moving legal system, where courts and prosecutors are overburdened with cases, the Madeleine case could drag on for many more months, legal experts said.

Kate McCann told a Sunday newspaper detectives pressured her to confess to having accidentally killed her daughter.

''They want me to lie. I am being framed,'' she was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mirror.

The couple are at home in the village of Rothley, Leicestershire, with crowds of journalists camped outside.

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