Madeleine McCann's mother Kate McCann was an MI5 spy when the 4-year-old went missing, claims Portuguese journalist
The Madeleine McCann case took an unprecedented turn this week after her mother Kate was accused of being a secret MI5 agent at the time her daughter went missing.
Sparking fury within the family, the ridiculous allegation in the days leading up to the 12th anniversary of Maddie’s disappearance on May 3 is not the first time that the 51-year-old has been accused of being in the UK's secret service, The Sun reports.
Speaking to Daily Mail, a family spokesman said, "These are absolutely absurd and ridiculous allegations, which Madeleine's parents are certain no one in their right mind would even consider believing. It is unmitigated garble and yet more nonsense they are having to endure at a very painful and difficult time for them."
Kate and Gerry have faced over 12 years of relentless conspiracy theories over the disappearance of their daughter. The spy claim was first made by a disgraced cop who initially led the police investigation in Portugal named Goncalo Amaral.
Now, the wild conspiracy theory has been flamed by Jose Antonio Saraiva, a veteran journalist and founder of Portuguese newspaper Sol. He alleged that he was told Maddie's sudden disappearance was directly linked to her parents' "secret activity" owing to her mother's "suspected" membership in MI5.
In the latest issue of Sol, Saraiva asked why Gordon Brown, UK's Chancellor at the time, decided to send British Ambassador John Buck to Praia da Luz immediately after news broke that the youngster had vanished from the holiday resort.
According to Saraiva, a certain female genetics doctor, who he identified as H. Santos, had already identified Kate McCann as an MI5 agent. He even went one step further claiming Maddie's father Gerry was also a potential spy, which would allegedly "explain" their daughter's disappearance.
The hurtful claims were fueled by the Sol issue. "This would explain the immediate dispatch to Portugal of a representative of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Prime Minister Gordon Brown," Saraiva wrote. "It was said that Brown did it because he was Gerry's schoolmate. But this explanation doesn’t wash. The English are very formal and there's not the cronyism there that characterizes Southern Europe. A minister doesn't send an official representative to find out about the disappearance of a little girl because he went to school with her father."
However, Brown and McCann have never been at school together, according to reports. Furthermore, the former Prime Minister, at 68, is 17 years older than Gerry.
Meanwhile, Amaral claimed last year that MI5 spies had helped cover up Maddie's death and disappearance, saying British secret agents "for sure had an involvement" in her vanishing inexplicably.
Both Kate and Gerry have spoken about the hurt caused to the family from all the outlandish speculation and conspiracy theories spewed by various individuals.
Clarence Mitchell, the spokesman for the McCann family, explained that their refusal to participate in the new Netflix series 'The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann' was based solely on their apprehensions over providing more fodder to conspiracy theorists. According to them, it would do nothing to help with the search for their missing child.
Since the beginning, Kate has maintained that she believed her daughter had been abducted. Gerry, on the other hand, took Amaral to court over his spurious claims about the case in the controversial 2008 book 'The Truth of the Lie'. At the time, he claimed the embattled duo had covered up Maddie's accidental death in their apartment.
Last year, Mitchell revealed that one of the "most ridiculous" theories he had come across was that Maddie's birth was the result of a clandestine government cloning project. The year before that, Gerry opened up about the hurt caused by such baseless accusations.
"I'm sure it is a very small minority of people who spend their time doing it, but it has totally inhibited what we do," he said at the time.