Madeleine McCann search LIVE: Cops hone in on abandoned buildings & drop wider search as radar scanner and JCB deployed

Radar equipment seen in use
Radar equipment was seen in use for the first time this afternoon.
Derelict barns were cleared in preparation for scanning.
In one, visited by The Sun, piles of rubble had been thrown out of the building, leaving a clear floor ready for the ground radar.
It will scan 15ft down in Praia da Luz, Portugal, where Madeleine vanished from a holiday flat in 2007 aged three.
At least five different abandoned buildings were being searched today.
The search today extended to two more derelict barns, in the same area of scrubland.

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Times

an hour ago

• Times

Inside Mary Lou McDonald's plan to shake up Sinn Fein

Without a doubt, last year was something of an annus horribilis for Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein leader. The early omens were not good: February polling showed a surprising six-point drop in support as her party came under pressure over its stance on immigration. In the summer, McDonald's strategy to field a record 335 candidates in the local elections fell apart spectacularly. It was a disastrous day out, given that Sinn Fein took under 12 per cent of the national vote and more than 230 unsuccessful candidates were left picking up the pieces. For the first time, grassroots members of Sinn Fein began muttering about McDonald's future in charge of the party. With five months until a general election, the pressure on the leader was intense. At the same time, she was dealing with huge personal upheaval. Having recovered from a hysterectomy, McDonald and her family took a trip to Biarritz. In the airport in France, her husband, Martin Lanigan, became seriously ill. He later underwent surgery and was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Then her father, Patrick, with whom she had a complicated relationship, died last summer. In October, a series of scandals rocked Sinn Fein, right as the country was on the precipice of a general election. A 'complete overhaul' of the party's governance structure was ordered by McDonald, and The Sunday Times can now reveal the outcome of those reviews and the new rules which TDs, senators and staff members will have to follow. The first big controversy last October came when it emerged that two press officers had given job references for a former colleague under investigation for child sex offences, for which he was later jailed. Seán Mag Uidhir, a well-known Sinn Fein figure who headed the party's media operation in the north, and his colleague Caolán McGinley left Sinn Fein when it emerged that they provided references for Michael McMonagle. McDonald said that McMonagle was immediately suspended when he was questioned by the PSNI about the allegations in 2021, and yet the following year, his two co-workers provided the references. As part of the 'complete overhaul' of governance, a review of human resources practices took place. An internal memo has been given to party members which lays out new rules. From now on, all requests for job references for staff who work or once worked for Sinn Fein need to be referred to the party's HR manager. Members and staff have been told they shouldn't give any references at all. If clearance is given by HR for former and current employees, only brief factual references should be provided, confirming only the person's start and finish date and their job title. References should not mention the person's character or ability, and line managers are now the only people authorised to provide these references. Furthermore, references should also not be given for elected representatives or activists, except in exceptional circumstances that must be approved by Sam Baker, the party's general secretary. Not everyone in the party is a fan of the rules, which are laid out in a private memo, but the new diktat will remain in place. Another huge issue that arose last October came with the shock resignation of the Laois TD Brian Stanley. After he left, he described an inquiry into a complaint made against him as 'seriously flawed'. A Sinn Fein draft report into a complaint made against Stanley came to the opinion that his conduct in an incident constituted 'sexual harassment', something he strongly denied. The internal inquiry into the complaint dragged on from late July of last year until early October, with claims and counter-claims being made. The second big piece of work as part of the overhaul was to look at how Sinn Fein disciplines its members. Barry Mulqueen, a Belfast barrister, undertook an in-depth review, looking at how the disciplinary committee had handled complaints to date. He was due to supply a report to Sinn Fein at the end of May. Sources say that what has emerged is that the party's disciplinary processes are not fit for purpose. Issues that are likely to be addressed will be the structure of internal inquiries, who carries them out and, crucially, the amount of time an inquiry takes. There is a view that complaints drag on for far too long, and that a structure needs to be put around the 'back and forth' nature of serious complaints. The third serious blow for Sinn Fein last year was the controversy over a former senator who was secretly suspended and later resigned from the party over inappropriate messages sent to a teenager. Niall Ó Donnghaile, a former Belfast lord mayor, was suspended by Sinn Fein over the issue but the party let him resign on health grounds without revealing the complaint against him. The teenager in question then said McDonald's tribute to Ó Donnghaile was 'like a mental stab'. At the time, she issued a statement thanking him for his service to the party, something she later apologised for. On foot of all of this, Gareth McGibbon, a registered social worker, has completed a new draft of the party's child protection policy. A source said that a part of this work involved making sure that everyone in Sinn Fein knew exactly what steps to take, and how to conduct themselves, if a matter of concern involving a minor arose. There has also been work done to make sure the policies are aligned north and south. All of these revelations, and the resulting follow-up questions, emerged for Sinn Fein in a drip-feed manner that created a huge sense of dread, especially as the country was on the verge of a general election. One party member described the period as the party being 'in a death spiral'. Although Sinn Fein painted the results of the election as a triumph, it failed to replicate its quota-smashing performance of 2020, and ultimately failed to cross the threshold into Government Buildings. Since then, the results of the election have been studied carefully by strategists. Sinn Fein is ultra-secretive by nature and prefers to keep a tight lid on what is happening behind the scenes. However, The Sunday Times spoke to sources at all levels of the party to get a detailed insight into the mood within the camp. Sinn Fein's decision to present a united front with the rest of the 'combined opposition' of Labour, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit and others has gone down well with supporters, who feel voters might, in future, buy into the idea of a government made up of a left-wing bloc. 'Grassroots members are happy with this strategy, and with Mary Lou being front and centre of that. It was good red meat,' a local party member said. Close observers of Sinn Fein's daily attacks during leaders' questions may also have noticed a subtle shift. While TDs spent the five years leading up to last November's general election presenting the public with credible alternative policies, this time the plan of action is attack, attack, attack. There was, a source said, 'a certain amount of preparing for government that went on in recent years but now we are sticking to the principles of equality for the working class. It is going back to our roots on issues like neutrality, housing and health and disability services.' Away from the Dail chamber, the party is refocusing itself on its bread-and-butter issues. 'We are in a period of regrowth,' the insider said. 'Our focus from an activism and membership point of view is unity and the unity message. There is a big, big push now to focus on unity in messaging, for discussion and in terms of organising events. Party members have been asked to coalesce around this again.' Another criticism of Sinn Fein made after last year's elections came from John Hearne, the respected Waterford councillor. He said the party was being run by 'armchair generals'. Sinn Fein is actively trying to re-engage its membership base, and the decision-making process around the presidential campaign has been a case in point. 'There has been an interesting shift in attitude from the hierarchy,' a party source said. 'Every member was asked to consider making a submission to the party or through the structures to give their thoughts based on four scenarios.' The first option was Sinn Fein running its own candidate; the second was Sinn Fein promoting and backing a candidate with the united left; the third was giving tacit support to that candidate on the left; the fourth involved the party sitting it out on the sidelines. Some of the feedback so far has indicated strong support for option two: fully backing a candidate of the left. One decision from the top that has not gone down quite so well is the decision to cancel the ard fheis this year, and hold an annual conference in April 2026, which will happen in Belfast. The party cited 'logistical and strategic challenges' and said it was 'increasingly difficult' to find a suitable venue for the autumn and 'particularly one large enough to accommodate our growing attendance'. Party members who spoke to The Sunday Times said they were not consulted about this decision and they also said they had doubts about the reasons given for putting it off. A source with knowledge of the decision said it was taken because the party simply would not get enough media attention for an ard fheis when a presidential election is happening and a budget was being announced, particularly on TV shows. There are other pressing decisions to be made, however — decisions which may yet divide the party. On Saturday, July 5, in Dublin, selected party members will gather for a special conference on gender policy. It comes after Sinn Fein was banned from taking part in a trans Pride march in Dublin next month over its stance on rights for transgender people, despite meetings with LGBT+ groups. These groups want Sinn Fein to clarify its stance on puberty blockers in Northern Ireland, but also on the UK Supreme Court ruling on sex, gender and equality. David Cullinane, the Sinn Fein health spokesman, was 'rapped on the knuckles' by the party leadership after he posted on X that a Supreme Court ruling defining women by their biological sex was a 'common sense judgment'. He later deleted the message and apologised. The issue is particularly sensitive for McDonald given that she has a trans woman for a sibling. More liberal members within Sinn Fein are pushing for clear change and more conservative members are urging the party 'not to get involved', as one person put it, adding: 'It is not coming up on the ground.' Beyond this, members around the country are reporting that Sinn Fein remains under serious local pressure on immigration. 'We are still bruised from last year. Misinformation continues to fly across social media,' one said. There is a push among the membership for Sinn Fein to formulate a very clear and accessible immigration policy, but the sense is that, like many of the party's big plans, this is some way off in the future.

Times

an hour ago

• Times

My week at the Channel smuggler trial that exposed their tactics

A few weeks after a dinghy overfilled with migrants sank in the English Channel, with the loss of up to eight lives, one of those accused of sending them to their deaths was bemoaning his own fate to his cousin. 'I was owed €1,200 in this case, but I only received €150,' Khaled Maiwand complained, as they chatted on the phone. 'It made me sad when I took the money, but it wasn't my fault. 'I wasn't guilty. I just went with them and helped them. It was the people at the head of the network who I work with that did everything.' The exchange was one of several that were read back by the judge to Maiwand, a 25-year-old Afghan with a mop of curly hair and bushy beard, as he stood sheepishly in a basement courtroom last week alongside eight other alleged people-smugglers. They face multiple charges, including manslaughter, for which the prosecutor has demanded sentences of six to eight years. The trial in the northern French city of Lille centres on the early hours of December 14, 2022, when the flimsy dinghy thought to be carrying 47 people — more than three times the number it was built to take — sank in freezing water. Four people, not all of whom have been identified, died. Another four were never found. Survivors reported that one of the boat's air chambers had already burst before they set off. The proceedings have provided a fascinating insight into the working of groups, mainly made up of Afghans and others from the Middle East, responsible for smuggling as many as 16,000 people across the Channel so far this year, and presenting yet another small boats headache for the British government. The size and complexity of the investigation has also shown the time and resources needed to 'smash' the gangs, long Sir Keir Starmer's preferred method of dealing with one of the most intractable problems the government faces. • Starmer urged to consider one-in, one-out migrant exchange scheme It came as French authorities — under pressure from Britain to stem the flow of refugees — revealed that they plan to change the rules finally to allow their forces to stop migrants at sea, up to 300 metres from the coast. The judge and her two colleagues will announce their verdict on June 30. The police operation began with the smugglers' phones and geo-locations that 'showed the position of the people using them', said Dorothée Assaga, the lawyer for Shoaib Shinwari, a fellow Afghan also among the accused. The alleged smugglers used their phones constantly to speak to and message each other, and also to liaise with migrants, known in their slang as 'chickens' and to arrange their 'games' (trips across the Channel), in return for payments, dubbed 'okays', which in this case ranged from €1,500 to €4,000. The accused, all Afghan and Kurdish men aged 21 to 40, also often recorded their exploits in photographs and videos shared on social media. They did not realise they were creating a trove of material that could eventually be used as a basis for tracking them down and building a case against them. 'For example, they thought that when they deleted a picture, it would disappear,' said Assaga. 'They didn't understand it would continue to exist somewhere.' Working in conjunction with their British counterparts, French investigators quickly realised the key to finding the perpetrators lay in their phone records. Their goal was to find numbers that had been used both on the afternoon of December 13 at Loon-Plage, seven miles west of Dunkirk, where the migrants were camped out, and then again between 10pm and 2am, another 35 miles or so further west in Ambleteuse and Wimereux, where they had gathered in the woods before setting off on their ill-fated voyage. Initial results produced three phones, one of which belonged to Maiwand, who was arrested in March 2023 at the hostel in Cherbourg where he lived. By tracing the numbers that he and the other two dialled, the investigators managed over the course of several months to round up the remaining accused, several of whom were by then far from the northern French coast. One, Toryali Walizai, the alleged ringleader, is still at large, and believed to be in Serbia. Another Afghan, thought to have been his deputy, is to go on trial separately in Belgium. Those in court in Lille were merely the 'petites mains' — 'the little hands' — according to Assaga. Shinwari, 21, her client, who is also accused of manslaughter, refused to accept he was responsible for the deaths, given that he had driven the migrants only as far as the woods where they initially hid, rather than on to the beach itself, she said. Prosecutors have nevertheless demanded one of the tougher sentences — seven years — because he is accused of taking part in further smuggling operations the following autumn. Yet their carefully delineated roles — whether, like Shinwari as drivers, or as logisticians or as a saraf, the one who collects and launders the money paid by migrants — were crucial to a massive illegal enterprise stretching from the Channel to the Middle East and beyond. One such saraf among the accused is alleged to have handled payments of more than €800,000 (£690,000) in just over a year. Maiwand appears typical of many young men who begin their long journeys to Britain and other European countries as migrants — whether escaping persecution or simply searching for a better life — but then end up as members of the gangs that transport their compatriots. After leaving Afghanistan when he was still underage, Maiwand headed for Germany, where his request for asylum was denied. He then moved to France, where he spent at least two years sleeping rough, and attempted to take a small boat across the Channel at least twice. By the time of the disaster, he had somehow obtained a French residence permit. Paid €700 each month in social security, he is not thought to have done any legitimate work. In an impassioned final statement to the court, he denied having received any money from smuggling, insisting that he wanted only to help people. 'I am really upset by what happened,' he said. 'I have no responsibility for it.' But his — and the others' — varying degrees of contrition appeared at odds with the matter-of-fact way in which they discussed the disaster in telephone conversations and messages played to the court. 'Like the others, he does not consider himself as a trafficker, but instead as someone who helps the traffickers. It is a big psychological difference for them,' Maiwand's lawyer, Kamel Abbas, told me earlier during a pause in proceedings. 'They think that if you are a smuggler, then you are a gangster, you take advantage of death, you make a living with it, you get rich with it,' he added. 'They admit that they cook, carry the cans of petrol, show the migrants the way and drive the vehicles, but that's all, and it's only so they can get to England.' • How small boats crisis is linked to rise in rough sleeping The charges — which also include membership of an organised band — are not the only crimes of which the men are accused. Shinwari, for example, faces another trial over his alleged participation in the gang rape of an underage male migrant. A photograph of him, taken from social media, apparently showing him committing the crime, was flashed up briefly on a screen. Asked by the judge, Marie Compère, to talk about his life, Shinwari described himself as a loving husband and father of three. This did not prevent him from also being a rapist, Compère told him. In France, she added, with the air of a teacher giving a civics lesson, you can 'love whom you like' — man or woman — but when you assault or rape them, you 'transform them into an object'. In the more than two and a half years since the disaster, close to 90,000 migrants are thought to have successfully crossed the Channel — while growing numbers lost their lives during the attempt: a record 73 migrants are confirmed to have died last year, five times more than in 2023, according to Oxford University's Migration Observatory. In the meantime, the methods of Channel crossing have changed. Under the current French rules, police and gendarmes are unable to intervene once the migrants are in the water — leading to a number of recent embarrassing incidents in which officers have been filmed watching as boats overladen with migrantsput to sea in front of them. Under the planned new '300-metre' rule, confirmed by the interior ministry and expected to be announced at Starmer's summit next month with President Macron, this would change. Yet French officers who will have to implement the new rules appear sceptical that the change will provide the instant solution the two leaders are hoping for. 'Who is going to intervene? We are talking about 200km of coast here,' said Marc Musiol, a representative for the Unité police union for the coastal area including Calais and Dunkirk, who told me he and his colleagues had only learnt of the plan from the media. Police and other law enforcement agencies have few suitable boats, and will have to be given both proper training and new operating procedures, he said. And even then, intervening once a boat is at sea could end in disaster. 'The migrants panic so much at the sight of police, that even just five metres from the beach someone could drown or a baby could be crushed underfoot on the boat.'

The Independent

2 hours ago

• The Independent

Keir Starmer must end the injustice of indefinite sentences today

It is scarcely believable that there are still 2,614 people in prison in Britain serving indefinite sentences under legislation that was repealed 13 years ago – at a time when other prisoners are being released early because the jails are full. The government is now being given the chance to end this monstrous injustice – and to ease prison overcrowding – by adopting a plan drawn up by Lord Thomas, the former lord chief justice. Indeterminate sentences were brought in under the last Labour government as an exceptional measure for prisoners considered too dangerous to release without special safeguards. But Labour peer David Blunkett, who introduced the legislation, said that many more such sentences were handed out than he had intended, and the policy was the ' biggest regret ' of his career. The sentence was abolished by the coalition government, but existing prisoners continued to be subject to the stringent rules, not knowing whether they would ever be released and, if they were, being recalled to prison for minor offences. Thus, there have been a succession of terrible cases reported by The Independent, including those of Leroy Douglas, who has served almost 20 years for stealing a mobile phone, and Abdullahi Suleman, who is still inside 19 years after he was jailed for stealing a laptop. Plainly, there is more to their stories than this, and the Parole Board does need to be sure that those who are released are unlikely to be a danger to the public. But it cannot be right that, had they committed their crime a day after indeterminate sentences were abolished, they would have long been freed. What makes it worse is that other prisoners, some of whom pose a greater risk to the public than they do, are being let out early to free up prison places. As we report today, Lord Thomas has led a panel of experts in drawing up proposals to give every prisoner serving an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence a release date within two years, and to recall them only as a last resort. James Timpson, the prisons minister and Labour peer, should accept this workable and detailed plan and seek to close this shameful chapter in the history of British criminal justice. Presumably, the only reason that he has not acted to end this scandal already is that Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is reluctant. Having been forced to order the early release of prisoners to avoid the police having to let criminals go because there is nowhere to put them, she does not want to hand further ammunition to ignorant critics who accuse her of being soft on crime. She has shown courage in taking the difficult measures forced on her by the irresponsibility of Conservative ministers, who allowed prisons to reach crisis point. She should show some more bravery in doing the right thing, which can even be sold, in part, as another emergency measure to free up prison places. If she will not do it, Sir Keir Starmer should instruct her to. He is the law and order prime minister, the former director of public prosecutions, who understands the criminal justice system better than any minister. He cannot allow this injustice to continue and must act on Lord Thomas's recommendations. We understand that the prime minister has taken to asking officials with increasing frequency, as he gets to grips with the frustrations of trying to deliver change: 'Why not today?' Why, we should ask him, not put an end to this scandal today?