Madeleine McCann’s father says there is 'no evidence' to say she’s dead

Madeleine McCann’s father has said there is “no evidence” to say his missing daughter is dead.

Gerry McCann, from Glasgow, said the hope of finding her after all this time is “slim”, but not “extinguished”.

Madeleine’s disappearance at the age of three from Praia da Luz in Portugal’s Algarve when her family was on holiday in 2007 remains unsolved.

“Madeleine’s been missing for 18 years, and the bottom line is, we still don’t know what’s happened to her,” Mr McCann told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday.

LOUGHBOROUGH, ENGLAND - APRIL 28: Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine disappeared from a holiday flat in Portugal ten years ago, are seen during an interview with the BBC's Fiona Bruce at Prestwold Hall on April 28, 2017 in Loughborough, England. (Photo by Joe Giddens - WPA Pool/Getty Images) — LOUGHBOROUGH, ENGLAND – APRIL 28: Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine disappeared from a holiday flat in Portugal ten years ago, are seen during an interview with the BBC’s Fiona Bruce at Prestwold Hall on April 28, 2017 in Loughborough, England. (Photo by Joe Giddens – WPA Pool/Getty Images) Getty Images

He said that there is “no evidence”, adding: “I don’t even mean ‘convincing’ evidence – there is no evidence to say she’s dead.

“Now we fully understand she may be dead, it may even be probable, but we don’t know that.”

He added: “I’d love to find her alive, but we need to find out what happened and bring whoever’s responsible to justice, and other children and people are at risk while that perpetrator is free.”

Mr McCann also told the programme that parts of the UK media made him feel like he was being “suffocated and buried” after the disappearance of his daughter, as he called for greater scrutiny of the press.

He added that the press interest in Madeleine’s disappearance in 2007 took a “huge toll” on his family.

Mr McCann said they were subjected to “monstering” by sections of the British press and are “lucky to have survived”.

“There were times where I felt like I was drowning, and it was the media, primarily,” he said.

“It was what was happening and the way things were being portrayed, where you were being suffocated and buried, and it felt like there wasn’t a way out.”

He said that for months afterwards, his family had journalists coming to his house and photographers “literally ramming their cameras against our car window”, which terrified the couple’s two-year-old twins.

Mr McCann also believes the press “repeatedly interfered” with the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

“[They] published material which should have been confidential, should be passed on to the police, witness statements, many other things that have gone out,” he added.

“So if you were the perpetrator, you knew a lot more than you should have done – and as a victim, as a parent, it’s absolutely dismaying.”

The McCanns are among more than 30 people who have signed a letter being sent to Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

They are calling on him to reverse the decision not to hold the second phase of the Lord Leveson Inquiry, which would have examined unlawful action taken by the media as well as relationships between journalists and politicians and the police.