A woman who believes that she saw Madeleine McCann being abducted has described how she is haunted by her failure to remember more details.

Jane Tanner claims that she saw an unknown man walking away from the holiday apartment in Praia da Luz carrying a girl in his arms on the night of May 3. “I wake up to that image every day. Every day I see him there, striding away, carrying Madeleine away and I try desperately to remember more detail,” she said. “I think about it over and over again. It’s horrible. He had his face turned away from me, sort of sideways and it was very dark. I just didn’t see it properly – I wish to God I had.”

The description of the man has been used to create an artist’s impression of the abductor, which has been handed to private investigators hired to find Madeleine.

Ms Tanner, 34, has told police previously that she did not believe the man was Robert Murat, the first official suspect in the case. But yesterday she claimed that she did not get a good enough look at the abductor’s face to rule him out. “I’ve never pointed the finger at Robert Murat because I simply don’t know if it was him or not. I would say the man I saw was more local, or Mediterranean-looking, rather than British, or a tourist.”

Mr Murat, 33, has insisted that he was at home with his mother 100 yards away from the McCanns’ apartment at the Ocean Club resort at the time Madeleine disappeared.

Ms Tanner, a marketing executive from Exeter, was one of seven British friends who were on holiday with Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. Ms Tanner claims she saw the man at about 9.15pm as she made her way back to her holiday apartment to check on her own daughters, aged 2 and 4. However, an independent witness has told police he could not recall seeing Ms Tanner or the man.

At about 10.05pm Ms Tanner learnt that Madeleine had gone missing. “I stood there with a feeling of complete horror washing over me,” she said. “I just felt so awful, I felt I could have stopped this all from happening. That guilt is never going to go away.”

Portuguese detectives plan to reinterview Ms Tanner and Russell O’Brien, another of the group of friends, as part of a review of evidence. They are likely to be made official suspects to allow them to have a lawyer present and so that detectives can ask incriminating questions. Police will also search the Portuguese church where Mr and Mrs McCann prayed after Madeleine disappeared.

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