SkyKey Events In Madeleine McCann Disappearance 11:35am UK, Sunday May 03, 2009
Here is a timeline of the key events since Madeleine McCann's disappearance.
Madeleine was three years old when she vanished from her family's apartment
2007
:: May 3 - Kate and Gerry McCann leave their three children asleep in their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz while they dine with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant.
Jane Tanner, one of the friends eating with the McCanns, later reports seeing a man carrying a child away earlier that night.
:: May 5 - Portuguese police reveal they believe Madeleine was abducted but is still alive and in Portugal, and say they have a sketch of a suspect.
:: May 14 - Detectives take Anglo-Portuguese man Robert Murat in for questioning and make him an "arguido", or official suspect.
:: May 25 - Detectives release a description of the man reported by Jane Tanner three weeks earlier after pressure from the McCanns, their legal team and the British Government.
Sketch of Madeleine suspect
:: May 30 - Mr and Mrs McCann meet the Pope in Rome in the first of a series of trips around Europe and beyond to highlight the search for their daughter.
:: August 6 - A Portuguese newspaper reports that British sniffer dogs have found traces of blood on a wall in the McCanns' holiday apartment.
:: August 11 - Exactly 100 days after Madeleine disappeared, investigating officers publicly acknowledge for the first time that she could be dead.
:: September 7 - During further questioning of Mr and Mrs McCann, detectives make them both "arguidos" in their daughter's disappearance.
:: September 9 - The McCanns fly back to England with their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.
:: October 2 - Goncalo Amaral, the detective in charge of the inquiry, is removed from the case after criticising the British police in a Portuguese newspaper interview.
:: October 25 - The McCanns release a new artist's impression drawn by an FBI-trained expert showing the man described by Jane Tanner.
Gerry and Kate McCann
2008
:: March 19 - Mr and Mrs McCann accept £550,000 libel damages and front-page apologies from Express Newspapers over allegations they were responsible for Madeleine's death.
:: April 7 - Three Portuguese detectives, led by Paulo Rebelo, fly to Britain to re-interview the seven friends on holiday with the McCanns when Madeleine vanished.
:: July 17 - Mr Murat receives £600,000 in libel damages from four newspaper groups over "seriously defamatory" articles connecting him with the child's disappearance.
:: July 21 - The Portuguese authorities shelve their investigation and lift the "arguido" status of the McCanns and Mr Murat.
:: August 4 - Thousands of pages of evidence from the Portuguese police files in the exhaustive investigation into Madeleine's disappearance are made public.
New artist's impression of Madeleine
2009
:: January 13 - Mr McCann returns to Portugal for the first time since coming back to the UK without his daughter.
:: March 24 - The McCanns launch a localised new appeal for information focused on the area in the Algarve where Madeleine disappeared.
:: April 4 - Mr McCann goes back to Portugal to help film a reconstruction of the events on the night his daughter vanished.
:: April 22 - The McCanns fly to the US to record an interview with chat show host Oprah Winfrey to mark two years since Madeleine's disappearance.
