'Find Madeleine's body or the McCanns will escape', prosecutor tells Portuguese police

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District Attorney Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses, who has been studying the ten volumes of evidence amassed against Kate and Gerry McCann, has given detectives a stark choice.

A police source claimed: "The District Attorney's office has given police an ultimatum - find Madeleine's body or the McCanns will escape."

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Gerry and Kate McCann in Portugal on September 7 after being declared suspects in their missing daughter's disappearance

Madeleine has been missing since May 3

The extraordinary directive piles even more pressure on detectives who have failed to turn up any clues to the four-year-old's whereabouts.

It is the latest indication that the flimsy police file against Kate and Gerry McCann is not enough to charge them.

The Policia Judiciaria - Portugal's equivalent of the CID - has received direct instructions from the prosecutor's office to find a body "at all costs", the source told newspaper 24 Horas.

The source added: "The accusation against the McCanns is hanging by a thread."

Meanwhile, Portugal's most senior prosecutor, Antonio Cluny - who is not directly involved in the McCann case - said:

"Without the little girl's body, everything is extremely complicated. There have been cases in which it was possible to obtain a conviction without there being a victim, but there were confessions."

"If we have a body, our work is done for us. If we don't, we have to dig deeper and work harder."