Revealed: 'Madeleine photofit man was jailed for raping British girl'

Joaquim Jose Marques raped his teenage victim while an accomplice targeted her friend, the Portuguese daily newspaper Diario de Noticias reported today.

Marques, who has a daughter of Madeleine's age, was sentenced to five years in jail in 1996 after being found guilty of the 1995 attack in Praia da Luz.

Just three weeks into the Madeleine investigation, which started in May last year, investigators ruled him out of any involvement in her disappearance.

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His unnamed accomplice was also convicted of rape in 1995, the Portuguese paper added.

The girls, both British and aged 17 and 18, were said to have been staying with a relative at the time.

Dreadlocked Marques, nicknamed Quim Ze, was also a known gun-runner and drug trafficker, the paper claimed.

He was linked to Madeleine's disappearance earlier this week after being identified from a new sketch of a man suspected of snatching her from her family's holiday flat in May last year.

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They interviewed him for a second time earlier this week after Kate and Gerry released an artist's sketch of the scruffy stranger seen by a British tourist in and around Praia da Luz in the days before the abduction.

Portuguese police ruled him out of the abduction but the McCanns spokesman Clarence Mitchell said they did not believe the right man had been found and said the hunt for the man in the drawing continued.

The Daily Mail yesterday tracked Mr Marques to his ramshackle farm in Pedragosa, four miles from the Algarve resort where Madeleine disappeared.

He refused to speak about the international hunt for the man shown in the posters - which have been sent to Interpol and to Portugal, Spain and North Africa.

He screamed obscenities at callers to the isolated farm and then returned brandishing an ancient-looking rifle.

Standing among his pigs and surrounded by feral dogs, Mr Marques shouted: "Leave me alone, leave me alone... look at this face, is this the face in the picture?"

Mr and Mrs McCann, both 39, believe the sketch could show the man who took their daughter from their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.

It was drawn by an FBI trained forensic artist based on descriptions by British tourist Gail Cooper, who told police how a "creepy man" came to her villa in Praia da Luz, asking for donations for a nearby orphanage, only days before Madeleine went missing.

Mrs Cooper, 50, of Newark, Nottinghamshire, said she saw the man three times, once when he was hanging around a children's beach outing.

Portuguese police have dismissed her sightings and the e-fit as having "no credibility" and say the McCanns are using them as a "diversion tactic".

They remain convinced Madeleine died last May 3 and that her parents were involved in her disappearance. Mr and Mrs McCann, of Rothley, are still official suspects in the case.

But the couple's private investigation agency Metodo 3 believe the sketch could show the abductor. Their hotline has received dozens of calls from those who think they have seen the man in the sketch.

A police source told the Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha the image "could apply to many, many people," and said Mr Marques was not a suspect.

He said: "Contact with the individual was not in any shape or form an interrogation. It was just an informal contact to clear up any suspicions."

Neighbours described Mr Marques as a reclusive character who had moved to the isolated farm last year to live quietly with his British-born girlfriend and their daughter, who is three or four.