This has me thinking about the burglary abduction gang.
Am I right in thinking that SY never named them publicly as suspects?
Wasn't it anonymous sources who spilled the beans?
Have SY named any suspects in the investigation?
How could they? There's no such thing in the UK.
Some of the people the PJ interviewed on behalf of SY were named as having arguido status in the media; others weren't.
Assuming that that is correct, it may have been the witnesses themselves who requested the status in order to benefit from certain rights. My reasoning for that is that when I last checked, at the time, I couldn't find any legal provision for temporary arguido status in the Portuguese CPP, but neither did I find any provision as to a temporary status in the event of a foreign police force requesting such interviews.
AIFAIK, they are no longer arguidos, which makes me think that it was an ad hoc provision to allow temporary status for the purpose of UK inquiries.