Madeleine father rejects drugging reports

MADRID - The father of missing British girl Madeleine McCann on Wednesday angrily rejected Portuguese media reports he and his wife Kate had drugged their children.

"There's absolutely no suggestion that Madeleine or the (twins) were druggedand it's outrageous," Gerry McCann told Spanish television channel Antena 3.

"These questions the public knows are nonsense and we shouldn't be giving them the time of day," he said.

In the couple's first television interview since Portuguese police named them as formal suspects in the case on Sept. 7, Kate McCann said she still believed her daughter was alive.

Madeleine vanished from a bedroom in a resort in Portugal's Algarve region on May 3, days before her fourth birthday. Her parents say they are innocent and have mounted a high-profile campaign to find Madeleine, who they think was abducted.

"I don't believe she's been taken away from us permanently. I don't feel it," said Kate McCann.

"I know she was taken away from that apartment. She is out there and I want her back. Everything else I'm sorry is rubbish.

"I think she is probably in someone's house, I don't know why and I suppose it's a feeling, but as Madeleine's mummy in my heart I feel she's out there."

The couple said they were launching a new 24-hour hotline manned by private detectives in a search across Portugal, Morocco and Spain for Madeleine.

In late August the couple said they had instructed their lawyers to begin legal action against Portuguese newspaper Tal & Qual after it reported police believed the couple killed Madeleine.

Kate McCann's voice cracked as she described how one of the couple's twins, Amelie, was talking about Madeleine coming home.

"It wasn't to me actually, it was to my friend. She just said, 'Madeleine's coming home to my lovely house and I'm going to share my toys with her'."