Man in prison arrested over schoolgirl's disappearance

A man aged 52, who was arrested at a prison, was being questioned last night about the disappearance of the schoolgirl Amanda Dowler.

Police said the unnamed man, who was detained at a London jail at about 10am yesterday, came from Ashford in Surrey, less than five miles from the Dowler family home in Walton-on-Thames. Amanda, 13, disappeared while walking home from the railway station at Walton-on-Thames on 21 March.

Despite more than 160 separate searches of local sites and 1,000 statements, no firm lead has emerged on how the girl, who is also known as Milly, disappeared.

Surrey Police declined to comment on whether the man was a convict, what offences he had been detained for or whether he had been in custody at the time of Amanda's disappearance. Sources close to the inquiry said the man, who is understood to have been held in a segregation unit, had been under investigation for a number of days.

One source said: "The word seems to be that he is a good suspect. The formal arrest has been made after some considerable time spent looking into his past."

The man, who was being questioned at Staines police station, is not known to the Dowler family.

The teenager, whose picture has become a familiar sight on posters offering a reward of £100,000 for her safe return, had left two friends at a café in the station on the day she disappeared. She had phoned her father, Robert, to say she would be late. The walk home should have taken 15 minutes. The absence of any witnesses has caused detectives to follow lines of inquiry ranging from an abduction to the theory that she ran away.

A man aged 36 whose arrest last month was followed by a search of his home in Chertsey, Surrey was later released without charge.