The new three-part documentary features British investigator Mark Williams-Thomas.

He told The Sun: “B had agreed to talk to me but the interview was blocked by prison authorities."

“We have since been in contact at length in ­writing and he has explained his position to me in detail.

“He has told me exactly where he was on the night Madeleine disappeared — and that he was not where the police say he was. He also insists that he is entirely innocent.

“My inquiries have unearthed evidence which is pretty explosive, but I’m not saying whether I believe what he told me. That’s for viewers to judge.”

B, in jail for the 2005 rape of a US pensioner in Portugal, was first named as a suspect by German police in June 2020.

They traced a mobile he was known to have been using to near a phone mast 200 yards from Kate and Gerry’s Ocean Club apartment on the day Madeleine was taken.

Former detective Mr Williams-Thomas claims in the documentary the phone could have been up to 22 miles away when it received a half-hour call as the mast covered a large signal cell.

Police work was last night said to be focused on gleaning “potentially crucial” forensic evidence from a VW camper van B drove while he lived on the Algarve.

Former pal Dieter Fehling tells the documentary that B boasted: “I remodelled and fixed up a hiding place big enough to fit small children.”

www.thesun.co.uk/news/18345751/madeleine...ew-on-disappearance/