Morocco Photo Not Of Missing Madeleine

Parents Of Missing British Toddler Have Hopes Dashed

(AP)  The parents of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann had their hopes dashed again Wednesday, as a girl resembling her photographed in Morocco turned out to be the daughter of a local olive farmer.

The excitement over the photo, taken by Spanish tourist Clara Torres in northern Morocco last month and widely published on the Internet, testified to the international frenzy that the McCann case has sparked. Many people have hoped for signs that Madeleine is alive more than four months after she went missing from a Portuguese resort.

International police organization Interpol said Wednesday that investigators have been studying the blurry detail of the photo. Only vague outlines of the girl's face were visible in the picture, which featured a group of people and woman with a fair-haired child on her back.

An Associated Press reporter reached the girl and her family Wednesday in Zinat in northern Morocco, the mountain village where the photo was taken and where the family works a modest olive farm.

The girl is 3-year-old Bouchra Ahmed Ben Aissa, and in the photo she was being carried by her mother, Hafida, while her aunt and father were also pictured, family members said.

The child, visibly perturbed by the heated interest in her in recent days, clung to her sister before retreating to play on a chipped tile landing outside her house.

Interpol said its office in Madrid, Spain, had received "a number of photographs from members of the public of potential Madeleine sightings, including the picture taken in Morocco by a Spanish couple."

The international police organization, based in the southeastern French city of Lyon, said the photos had been forwarded to Portuguese police, who are leading an investigation into the girl's disappearance.

Moroccan security officials told The Associated Press that police in the North African kingdom had not received any formal requests to investigate the matter. Portuguese police declined to comment on the grounds that an investigation was continuing.

A spokesman for the McCanns, Clarence Mitchell, said they experience an "emotional roller coaster ... each time this sort of information comes in."

"Clearly, if these reports that the girl in the photograph isn't Madeleine are true, it is disappointing news," said Mitchell. He said the couple has decided not to comment on reported sightings of Madeleine.

Madeleine vanished from the Portuguese resort Praia da Luz on May 3, soon before her fourth birthday. Portuguese police have named the girl's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, as official suspects in the disappearance.

The couple said they had left the girl and her younger twin siblings asleep in their rented villa while they had dinner nearby. Despite an extensive search and a worldwide publicity effort led by her parents, no confirmed trace of the child has turned up.

Alleged sightings of the girl have already been reported in Europe and Morocco. The area in which the photograph was taken is known for European influences, and fair-haired children with light-colored eyes are relatively common there.

The photo was taken through a car windshield at a distance of several dozen meters (yards), and the resemblance to Madeleine was only clear upon zooming up on the image.

[hkhp]

This is ridiculous - every little blonde haired girl spotted in Europe that looks to be 3-4 yrs old is going to raise hysteria. Another thing - do the police and her parents actually think that IF she was kidnapped and still alive, it would be for the purpose of giving her to a poor Moroccan family who would piggy back her while out at the fields?! Get real! If she was kidnapped for a purpose, it would more likely to satisfy the sick lusts of pedophiles, not a peasant family who cannot even afford to feed their own kids!

[whatithink-2009]

Meant to say blonde hair instead of blonde her.

Also, if you do a Google search on "Victoria Rowell" and daughter "Maya", you''ll see some pictures in the website wireimage of a mixed race woman and her blonde daughter.

[whatithink-2009]

bizzzz,

Morocco is a meeting place for both Africa and Europe. There were large communities of Dutch, for example, who settled their over the centuries. Also, just because a child has blonde her doesn''t mean that she is not racially mixed. This is a common misconception, I think thanks to the Nazis, that blonde hair is a sign of being purely white. Two brown haired mixed people can have a child with blonde hair as long as both are carrying the gene. There was a case where this happened recently.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/mixedtwins.asp

[reporter14]

A Picture is worth a thousand Words

www.poconocommunitynews.com

[wiccantexan]

Check out photo #2, a clear shot of the farmer''s blonde daughter.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/09/26/portugal.missing.girl.photo/index.html

[opedanderson]

It''s not her! The parents, the parents, the parents......

They know more than they are letting on!!

[wiccantexan]

leana5, very good points. There is one thing that no other child could duplicate; Madeleine has a distinctive flaw in one of her pupils (a line that goes from her dark center to the edge of the pupil).

[wiccantexan]

WiccanTexan,
Really? White little girls are common in Morroco? How common? Can you give me some percentages or refer me to a website? I''''m sure there SOME white little girls in Morroco, but you say it''''s common? How common?
How many other white people are the picture?

Posted by bizzzz at 01:33 PM : Sep 26, 2007
___________________

http://www.gosahara.org/mas.html

Read "general description."

http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/1e1bb/edc/

The indiginous people of Morocco are the Berbers. Many of them have fair skin and blue eyes, which leads ethnographers to believe they may have a European origin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair

The Berber and Kabylie populations of northern Algeria and Morocco have occasional redheads.

http://www.morocco-travel-agency.com/peopleofthefurthestwest.html

Much as many other peoples in the world, Berbers have blended with other people. There are differences between Berbers which have inspired many stories, of European slaves and war captives, bringing blond hair and red hair as well as green and blue eyes into the Berber race.

http://www.egyptorigins.org/berbers.htm

Many anthropologists know that some Berber tribes, such as the Riffians of the Atlas Mountains, have a large number of blond headed citizens, and that they also have high percentages of red-haired people comparable to that of the Celtic people of western Europe and Ireland.

[reporter14]

Hey, Is there a haunted houses next door to you? Did you always think there was, well you can find out if it is there or not by going to:
www.poconocommunitynews.com/hauntedhouses.html

[mia_1-2009]

I''d like to take exception to the quote that ''Europeans often leave their kids in resort bedrooms asleep while they eat a late dinner.'' As a Brit I don''t know of any parent who would even consider such a thing. It is considered gross negligence both in the UK and Portugal and according to a recent poll 99% of the public thought they should be charged and even have the twins taken from them! Of course I have sympathy for them now but I''m angry and condemn 100% what they did. Mark my words, if this was a poor working class couple the social workers would have prosecuted them long ago.

[mia_1-2009]

I''d like to take exception to the quote that ''Europeans often leave their kids in resort bedrooms asleep while they eat a late dinner.'' As a Brit I don''t know of any parent who would even consider such a thing. It is considered gross negligence both in the UK and Portugal and according to a recent poll 99% of the public thought they should be charged and even have the twins taken from them! Of course I have sympathy for them now but I''m angry and condemn 100% what they did. Mark my words, if this was a poor working class couple the social workers would have prosecuted them long ago.

[leana5-2009]

I read some accounts that say a journalist says he met the little girl in the photo and it wasn''t Maddie. However I''d also be careful about dismissing the whole thing too fast. These areas of Morocco are notorious for child prostitution, child pornography and human trafficking. And remember the case of Elizabeth Smart - she had been brainwashed and even when questioned several times she denied being Elizabeth. She finally began crying after a police officer took her aside and asked again. Also it has been five months since Maddie disappeared and young children change a great deal in that time. So if anyone other than her family saw her how would they be able to say it definitely wasn''t her?

[bizzzz-2009]

WiccanTexan,
Really? White little girls are common in Morroco? How common? Can you give me some percentages or refer me to a website? I''m sure there SOME white little girls in Morroco, but you say it''s common? How common?
How many other white people are the picture?

[neenga]

Europeans often leave their kids in resort bedrooms asleep while they eat a late dinner. We Americans generally don''t because we are so MISTAKE-FREE (right?). Don''t judge the McCanns by American standards. We have our own poor parenting: video & computer games instead of outdoor play, fast food on a daily basis, overindulgance (toys, clothes, cars), little family time around a dinner table with healthy food ... it goes on and on. We aren''t so great either.

[wiccantexan]

What''''s a blonde little girl doing in some dark Morrocan b!tche$ backpack?
Posted by bizzzz at 01:05 PM : Sep 26, 2007

Blonde, fair-skinned children are common in that region.

[bizzzz-2009]

There seems to be a lot of photography experts on this message board. I would tend to believe it MIGHT be Madeleine because the little girl sticks out like a sore thumb. What''s a blonde little girl doing in some dark Morrocan b!tche$ backpack? Don''t you find this picture odd, especially since child slave trade exists in this part of the world?
...and no...George Bush did not doctor this picture!

[wiccantexan]

My question on the blood is, with the intense media scrutiny they''re under, how could they have transported a child''s body undetected?

[wiccantexan]

Madeleine does have an identifiable flaw in the pupil of one of her eyes, so they''d be able to recognize that.

[wiccantexan]

MSNBC REPORTING:

Britain%u2019s Press Association reported that journalists determined that the girl in the photograph is believed by villagers in Zinat to be 5-year-old Bushra Binhisa, the daughter of an olive farmer.

%u201CShe has got a resemblance to Madeleine but when you see her properly, it is obvious it isn''t her,%u201D Evening Standard journalist Rashid Razaq told PA after seeing the girl.

[wiccantexan]

UPDATE IN ARTICLE:

Britain''s Sky News reported Wednesday afternoon that, according to unnamed security sources, the girl in the photo had been identified as the daughter of a Moroccan farmer. The report said investigators tracked the family in the photo to a farm about a mile from where it was taken, and found the young girl at the home.

If confirmed, the Sky report would put the hunt for Maddie back at square-one, with no solid leads on her whereabouts - at least none confirmed by investigators.