Gerry McCann, accompanied by a British film crew, has returned to Portugal to advise on a TV reconstruction of the night his daughter, Madeleine, was abducted.

Actors have been hired to play the parts of Madeleine, her family, the seven friends dining with her parents on the night of May 3 2007, and a suspect reportedly seen by one of the friends carrying a child away from the McCanns' holiday apartment that evening.

The spokesman for the family, Clarence Mitchell, said Mr McCann, a Glaswegian and Glasgow University graduate, but now resident in Leicester, and friends Jane Tanner and Matthew Oldfield, who were with him and his wife, Kate, on the night their daughter vanished, were in Praia da Luz to ensure that events were portrayed as accurately as possible. Mr Mitchell said: "The aim of this is to get that critical piece of information that could still help to find Madeleine. Gerry has returned with that aim.

"Certain aspects of the witness testimony were hidden deep in the police files and these particular aspects have received very little attention. The private investigators feel that it is very important to highlight these things.

"It's being done simply in the hope that it will jog someone's memory. There are new aspects of that night that have not yet been made public and hopefully they will generate new information that could offer the vital clue," he added.

Mrs McCann, 41, originally from Rothley, met her husband while both were working at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow. She has stayed behind at the family home in Leicestershire with the couple's twins, Sean and Amelie.

The reconstruction is expected to be shown on May 7 in a Channel Four Cutting Edge documentary to mark the second anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, five days before her sixth birthday on May 12.

Negotiations are also under way for the film to be broadcast on Portuguese television and across Europe, and it will be available on the Find Madeleine website.

The McCanns left Praia da Luz in September 2007 shortly after being made arguidos, or official suspects, in their daughter's disappearance, but that status was lifted last July after prosecutors conceded there was no evidence to suggest their involvement.

Mark Raphael, commissioning editor for documentaries at Channel Four, said: "The disappearance of Madeleine McCann is one of the most harrowing unsolved crimes of recent years."