Madeleine ‘was stolen to order’ by paedophiles

British police received a tip-off that Madeleine McCann had been stolen to order by a group who took her photo in Praia da Luz three days before she vanished. An email sent by a Met officer in the UK said the tip-off was that paedophiles in Belgium placed an order for a "young girl". Madeleine was spotted and photographed in Portugal by an associate, the picture was sent to Belgium, and the paedophiles there agreed to her abduction.

The email about the tip-off has emerged as part of the 11,000-page file on the case released by Portuguese police earlier this week. It was sent by a member of the vice squad on March 4 to his Portuguese and Leicestershire counterparts. On April 28, the Portuguese police asked Interpol to investigate the information as a matter of urgency, but the inquiry was shelved on July 21.

Yesterday it emerged that a shop worker in Amsterdam had said she saw a Portuguese-looking man and woman with a French accent with a little girl who spoke English and said her name was Maddie. The 'sighting', reported in June 2007, was not passed on to the McCann family.