PRAIAR DA LUZ - A Russian man interviewed by Portuguese police looking into the disappearance of a four-year-old British girl said Thursday that he had nothing to do with the case.
Police removed computer equipment from Sergei Malinka's apartment in Praia da Luz on Wednesday night and then took him in for several hours of questioning in the nearby city of Portimao, in Portugal's southernmost province of Algarve.
Malinka, a computer expert from Moscow, reportedly designed a website for Robert Murat, a 33-year-old British man who was identified by police earlier this week as the first and so far only formal suspect in the case.
Speaking to reporters gathered outside the building where he lives, Malinka said he was "completely" innocent.
"I've invested seven years of my life in this country trying to succeed, and suddenly in one hour it's all fallen apart," he said.
Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa told Portugal's Lusa news agency that Malinka was interviewed as a witness and not as a suspect. The investigation was "dynamic" and could undergo changes at any moment, he added.
Madeleine "Maddie" McCann disappeared on May 3 from the family holiday apartment where her parents had left her, along with her younger brother and sister, while they went to a nearby restaurant in Praia da Luz.
Private television channel TVI said police wanted to question Malinka to find out why he made a telephone call to Murat on the night that Madeleine went missing.
But in a telephone interview with TVI, Malinka denied calling Murat that night and said he was thinking of taking legal action against the police.
Murat, who told a British television station earlier this week that he was being made a scapegoat by police, is pondering legal action against several Portuguese publications because of what he said were false reports concerning his private life.
"He is shocked with the speculation of the Portuguese press," a friend of who is acting as his spokesman, Tuck Price, told reporters camped outside of Murat's home in Praia da Luz.
The search for Madeleine has led newscasts and dominated headlines in Britain and Portugal. She was aged three when she disappeared but turned four on May 12.
05/17/2007 17:27 GMT