'Find Ben Needham' Twitter blocked by official 'Find Madeleine McCann' account

The official Twitter account backing the search for Madeleine McCann has blocked the account which supports the campaign to find Ben Needham.

Administrators of @FindBenNeedham discovered they had been blocked from viewing the account yesterday. The campaign's Greek account @findbengreek has also been blocked.

One of the administrators of Ben's account, using her personal account, asked @findmadeleine why this was the case and was told "we do not want to be associated with some of the types of people they @FindBen Needham) follow."

Some individuals followed by Ben's Twitter account are known to take an anti-McCann stance.

Ben's mum Kerry said : "All I can say is that Ben's campaign has never been anti McCann - we can't help the fact that some members of the public give their opinion about the McCann case just the same as people give their opinion about Ben's case. I have never once spoken badly about the family, I have only ever given my opinion about the way the two cases have been handled so differently by the authorities."

Madeleine McCann was three years old when she disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Portugal in May 2007.

In these excerpts from a post yesterday, the person in charge of the @findmadeleine account, said, "This is the last time I will address this issue. Gerry and Kate do not use social media and have asked me to manage the social media accounts for our campaign. In the past couple of weeks, there has been a concerted effort to get people to stop looking for Madeleine. Some argue the search costs too much, others say it's hopeless. We don't believe the search for Madeleine is hopeless and putting up polls asking if the search should stop is not only crass, it's cruel. How can one put a price on the life of a child?With that being said, I, and I alone, have made the decision to block ANYONE who thwarts the search for Madeleine via social media--whether that be with running commentary on the investigation, posting negative comments about the search/investigation/cost, or saying Madeleine is a lost cause. We believe Madeleine is alive and we have great faith in The Met. If you cannot be supportive of the search for Madeleine, please unlike/unfollow our social media pages. We want people who are hopeful and actually care about Madeleine being found supporting us. WE NEED YOUR HELP to find her and we don't want negative comments filling our feeds."

Ben Needham went missing on July 24 1991 from the Greek island of Kos, There have been no sightings of the 21 month old since.

Madeleine McCann was three years old when she disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Portugal in May 2007.