The tip off was by a father who believed that he had seen the missing Madeleine McCann at Flatenbadet in the southern Stockholm suburb of Bagarmossen, according to the Expressen newspaper.

The mystery of Madeleine McCann – the girl who disappeared from a holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007 while her parents were having dinner with friends at a nearby restaurant – was not however solved at a Swedish bathing spot.

“It was an Alva or Ylva who was out with her grandmother. So the police patrol left the scene without getting involved,” Joakim Caryll at Stockholm police said to the newspaper.

Madeleine McCann was born in 2003 in Leicester in central England. She was on holiday with her parents Kate and Gerry McCann, and her twin siblings, in the Algarve region of Portugal when she disappeared on May 3rd 2007.

Since her disappearance there have been a number of sightings of Madeleine in Portugal and elsewhere in Europe after the case received massive media attention across the continent.

The case took a twist in September 2007 when Madeleine’s parents were classified by Portuguese police as arguido (suspect). The case was closed and their suspect status lifted on July 21st 2008.

The campaign to find Madeleine has continued however and on May 4th 2009 Kate and Gerry McCann were interviewed on the Oprah Winfrey show.