LONDON (AFP) -- The mother of the first suspect named over the disappearance of toddler Madeleine McCann spoke for the first time to rubbish notions her son was involved, in a BBC program to be screened Monday.

Robert Murat's mother Jenny said her son was with her throughout the evening of May 3, when McCann, aged three, disappeared from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz on the Portuguese south coast.
British ex-patriot Murat lives with his mother close to the holiday complex where McCann had been left sleeping with her twin siblings while her parents ate in a nearby restaurant.
Jenny Murat said anyone suggesting her son had been seen on the complex was not telling the truth.
""I just don't know why they are lying,"" she said.
""On May the third I'd been out taking the dogs out, which I do every single night of my life. And I got home about eight o'clock and Robert was already there and he was in all of the evening.
""We were sitting in the kitchen talking the whole evening. I would definitely have known if he'd gone out.""
The toddler's parents Gerry and Kate McCann are the only others named as ""arguidos"" -- formal suspects -- in the case.
They have raised a one-million-pound (two-million-dollar, 1.4-million-euro) fighting fund through public donations to help the search for their eldest child.
They have hired a Spanish private detective agency, headed by Francisco Marco, to hunt for her.
""He's very confident,"" the McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell said.
""He's 100 percent certain that she's alive and believes that they are 'very, very close' to finding the kidnapper.""
Mitchell confirmed that a new possible sighting of the missing toddler in Portugal on May 5 was being investigated.
Though the blanket coverage in British media has ended, there is still widespread interest in the case.