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Madeleine McCann: Parents mark 10 years since daughter went missing

Madeleine McCann's parents have told the BBC they will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes" to find their missing daughter.

Next week sees the 10th anniversary of her disappearance, aged three, from an apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal.

The couple, from Rothley in Leicestershire, said: "real progress" had been made by the Metropolitan Police over the past five years.

There is still hope that we can find Madeleine, Mrs. McCann said.

Mrs. McCann, who has described the impending anniversary of her daughter's disappearance as a horrible marker of time, stolen time", said she was no less hopeful of finding Madeleine than she had been in 2007.

The search for Madeleine

Madeleine McCann was three when she went missing

Mr. McCann said he and his wife "tried everything in our power to not have a long, protracted, missing person case like this".

"It's devastating and we really threw ourselves into trying to do everything we could to help find her," he said in an interview with Fiona Bruce.

It looks like that hasn't worked yet. But you know we are still looking forward... we still hope.

"Since the Metropolitan Police actually started their investigation, it has taken a huge pressure off us, individually and as a family.

"The key thing was - and I suppose the injustice of it - was that after the initial Portuguese investigation closed, essentially, no-one else was actually doing anything proactively to try and find Madeleine.

And I think every parent could understand that what you want - and what we have aspired to is to have all the reasonable lines of inquiry followed to a logical conclusion.

Mrs. McCann said the Met Police had "managed to pull so much together and sift through so much information, so now we do seem to be on just several lines of inquiry rather than tens, hundreds

The money spent on the search

A widespread search took place in the areas around Praia da Luz on the Algarve

Four detectives are working on the case in the UK, scaled back from 30 in 2011, with more than £11m spent so far.

In March, police were granted £85,000 to extend the search for a further six months, from April to September.

Mr. McCann said criticism of the amount of money being spent on the search was really quite unfair and that even though it was a single missing child, there were other crimes that came to light following Madeleine's abduction, that involved British tourists, so I think prosecuting it to a reasonable end is what you would expect.

He added that this type of stranger abduction was exceptionally rare, which was partly why Madeleine's case had attracted so much attention.

The McCanns also said they intended to continue a legal battle against Portuguese former detective Goncalo Amaral, who wrote a book about their daughter's disappearance, in which he suggested she was dead.

Although the book was banned by a Portuguese court, that decision was overturned by the country's highest court.

Mr. McCann said they would be appealing, "because of the last judgment, I think, is terrible".

He pointed out that Met Police chief leading the investigation, Mark Rowley, had recently said that there was no evidence that Madeleine was dead, "and the prosecutor has said there's no evidence that we were involved in any crime

"Saying anything opposite isn't justice, it's not justice for Madeleine.

Mrs McCann said Mr Amaral's claims had caused "a lot of frustration and anger", but "we just need to channel that and... hope that in the long run that justice will prevail

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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39757287