Man arrested over Corrie McKeague is released on police bail as missing RAF gunner's father claims ‘several’ people are perverting the course of justice 

  • The 23-year-old disappeared after a night out in Suffolk last September
  • Police are searching a landfill site where it is thought he may have been taken
  • They have arrested a man on suspicion of trying to pervert the course of justice
  • He was quizzed by detectives before being bailed until April 13 this evening 

A man arrested in relation to the disappearance of Corrie McKeague has been released on police bail as his father claims 'several' people are perverting the course of justice. 

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The 26-year-old suspect was arrested by police officers this morning, more than five months after Mr McKeague disappeared following a night out in Suffolk.

The man was released by detectives this evening and told to return on April 13. 

Martin McKeague said he doubted that just one person was illegally obstructing the search for his son.

He wrote on his Facebook page: 'You'll have seen the press release below about the arrest made by the Suffolk police in relation to the search for my son. 

'At this point the McKeague family in Scotland is not getting its hopes up. 

'There are a number of lines of enquiry that the police are pursuing just now so we'll just wait and see what we find out about this one. 

'Also, in my opinion there's not just one person out there who is perverting the course of justice in the investigation into Corrie's disappearance.'  

Mr McKeague's mother has also spoke out in regards to the arrest and said the man was not a friend or relative of her son.

Mr McKeague, 23, has been missing since September last year after he went out with friends in Bury St Edmunds.

Police released CCTV of two people in the area at the time of Mr McKeague's disappearance
Police released CCTV of two people in the area at the time of Mr McKeague's disappearance

Despite extensive searches of surrounding areas, no trace of him has been found. 

Police are now preparing to sift through thousands of tons of rubbish at a dump in Milton near Cambridge.

Investigators made the link to the landfill after a bin lorry made a collection in the area where Mr McKeague was last seen. 

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Police have today released footage of two people they wish to speak to after they were spotted in the area where Mr McKeague was last seen. 

Detective Superintendent Katie Elliott said: 'We are continuing to make progress on the investigation and we will be starting the landfill site search as soon as the preparatory work is complete.

'We have been carrying out a lot of enquiries behind the scenes and our work continues to find the truth about what happened to Corrie.'

Mr McKeague's mother, Nicola Urquhart, 48, said: 'I've spoken to the my other sons, Makeyan and Darroch, and the rest of the family, and were just trying so hard not to read more into this than their might be.

'It might end up being nothing or might end up being huge so we don't know. There actually isn't anything that I know that the police haven't put out there.

'They obviously contacted us to let us know that they had somebody in custody and they would be interviewing them.' 

Mrs Urquhart has previously said there is a 'good possibility' her son's body will be found at the landfill site.

Speaking last month, she said: 'I think there's a good possibility that that's where he could have ended up, because I try to look at things logically.

'What we know is that he's not left on foot, he's not still in there now, so he's left in a vehicle. That means he could have gone in a bin and then in the bin lorry, or in one of the other vehicles that were there.

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Mr McKeague and girlfriend April Oliver. His mother has said she thinks his body may be found

Mrs Urquhart added: 'I don't think anyone who has put Corrie there is going to come forward - they would have done it by now.

'But if someone knows how someone is behaving, if they are behaving oddly, we're going to find Corrie if he's in that landfill, so come forward now, so whoever has put him there doesn't get away with saying he's fallen in a bin and it's an accident.

'At least give us some more closure, not just finding Corrie, but also how he got there and what happened to him.'

Detectives have so far spent more than £300,000 in their search to find Mr McKeague, including using Cadaver dogs, trained to sniff out dead bodies.

The investigation is one of the most expensive ever carried out by Suffolk and Norfolk Constabularies. 

Mr McKeague's family have also raised more than £50,000 to draft in private investigators to help and have organised three private searches in their desperate hunt for clues.

Mr McKeague was last seen walking through Bury St Edmunds after a night out in September

Since Corrie's disappearance, it has also emerged that his girlfriend April Oliver, 21, is pregnant with his child.

Miss Oliver said Corrie did not know about the baby which is due in late spring or early summer.

Corrie is originally from Fife in Scotland and moved down to Suffolk to live at RAF Honington where he worked as a gunner and team medic in the air force.

Anyone with information about his disappearance is asked to call the incident room at Suffolk Police on 01473 782019. 

Family have handed over huge cache of Facebook information 

Police have refused to confirm whether the 26-year-old man was arrested after they were handed a 'huge amount' of Facebook data.

The RAF gunner's family hired private detectives McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS) to help find the 23-year-old after raising £50,000 to fund a private search.

The investigation firm spent weeks examining a huge amount of information collected on social media which police do not have the resources to investigate themselves.

Corrie's mother Mrs Urquhart said it had taken around six people more than five weeks' work to accumulate all the Facebook data from Corrie's accounts into a package police could use.

Mr McKeague's mother, Nicola Urquhart, says she is unsure how important the arrest is

Speaking last month, she said: 'It is a huge piece of work, for them even to start looking through now.

'There are over 120,000 people just on the Find Corrie Facebook site alone and every comment that's been made, even if it's been deleted, is still there and all of that has now been put into a spreadsheet that's a living map.

'All of that's now been brought together. We've now got all the private messages, all the Twitter, all the other social media, all the phone calls, everything we've got is now being put into a package to give to the police.

'MIS are still working on that because it's a huge piece of work. They've managed to get all of the Facebook stuff and the police have all of that now.'

Nicola said nobody had ever run such an enquiry using social media before but that was how the investigation had evolved.

The work by MIS gives police the ability to search the data using keywords.

Mrs Urquhart added: 'Because of the sheer size of it, it's still a massive job for them to go through.'

A Suffolk Police spokesman refused to confirm whether the man was arrested as a result of the information they'd been given. 

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