Ben Needham: How the search unfolded
25 years after Sheffield toddler Ben Needham went missing on the Greek island of Kos, police have concluded he died in an accident.
Operation timeline
1991 - South Yorkshire Police begin to support Ben’s family following his disappearance in Kos, Greece on 24 July.
October 2011 - SYP review all of the material gathered by the Greek police since 1991.
December 2011 - A court battle is won by SYP to obtain Ben’s DNA from Sheffield Children’s Hospital.
October 2012 - A team of specialist search advisors from SYP travel to Kos to support the Greek authorities in their investigation and to carry out an examination of the ground near to where Ben was last seen. A soil sample is taken, tested and found to contain animal traces.
February 2014 - South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner requests funding from the Home Office.
January 2015 - The Home Office confirms it will allocate £700,000 of funding for an SYP team to support the Greek led investigation.
March 2015 - SYP officers travel to Kos to take soil samples from the ground near to where Ben was last seen. This is to exhaust previous lines of enquiry.
March 2015 - A DNA sample is taken from a man in Thessalonica, Greece. The man believed he could have been Ben Needham; however, the DNA results showed he was not.
May 2015 - The Operation Ben team, along with Kerry Needham, her daughter Leighanna and her mother Christine, travel to Athens in Greece to appear on the Fos Sto Tounel TV show. The programme is aired on Alpha TV every Friday and is watched by half of the Greek population. A press conference was also held with the Greek media and some UK media. This led to hundreds of calls from Greek members of the public.
June 2015 - SYP release a statement regarding a Greek family (the Keremi’s), who are long-speculated to have been involved in what happened to Ben. We confirmed that the investigation has found no evidence to link them to his disappearance, or that they have any knowledge of his whereabouts.
October 2015 - Soil testing results are analysed and influence future planned operational activity.
March 2016 - The Home Office approved an extra £450,000 funding to continue the investigation until towards the end of 2016.
May 2016 - The Operation Ben team visit Kos to appeal directly to the Greek media and to further various lines of enquiry. The appeal resulted in widespread media coverage in Greece and resulted in hundreds of new pieces of information being received from the public. The appeal also featured on the Fos Sto Tounel TV programme again.
September 2016 - Members of the Operation Ben team return to Kos as a result of information given to DI Cousins following the appeal in May. Two areas of interest are searched over a period of just over three weeks, with over 1,200 tonnes of soil being sifted through. Over 118 items have been recovered, all of low interest, some of which are to be brought back to the UK for testing.