Gonçalo Amaral is interviewed by Porto Canal - 14.03.2014
Q: Do you regret anything?
“I would do exactly the same [today that I did then], with a small difference: I would not leave the Polícia Judiciária. It could be a problem for the Polícia Judiciária. I did think about it then, shall I leave or not, if I stay with the police I’m a problem for the police, or if I leave, I have all of the other problems.”
“I don’t regret what I did, I did it with conviction, I did it to defend the investigation model, what a criminal investigation is supposed to be. Earlier, you spoke about the politically correct, the politically correct policeman. It is my understanding that criminal investigations cannot be politically correct, because they can’t be concerned with politics. And what happened, and continues to happen, is that we have to be politically correct, subordinate to the English power. That happens, it happened on the 2nd of October [of 2007] at the Lisbon Treaty, there were discussions between José Sócrates, then prime minister, and Gordon Brown, the English prime minister, who told the newspapers that he had asked the Portuguese prime minister about the [Maddie] case. So even before that it was already a political case. And when politics intrude into a criminal investigation, nothing will end well, whether the criminal investigation relates to a homicide, a burglary, a disappearance, or corruption.”
“Going back to the beginning of the question, I don’t have any regrets. I don’t have regrets because although principles and values don’t fill the fridge, I feel rich in another way.”
Q: Were you removed from your post and sidelined until you left the Judiciary Police because you were too close to finding the truth?
“No, no. I left the investigation, I was removed from the investigation because the case had to be dominated politically. Just that. Because I opposed the archiving. I told directors in the Police directly that I did not agree with the archiving. They suggested to me, they told me that there are processes, there are investigations that do not end, that have no result. And that I shouldn’t do a lot. That I should consider the case had ended. I always opposed that. That is why I left the investigation, not because I was close to anything. I don’t see my leaving as being the result of someone fearing anything. The question was that the case is political. Only politics. It’s politics that is driving this matter. When politics enters the investigations, when investigations are politically correct, we get nowhere.”
http://themaddiecasefiles.com/topic21993.htmlTHE DISMISSAL: END OF A CAMPAIGN OF DEFAMATION AND INSULTS.
At the Forum, where we attend the ceremony presided over by the government representative for the province of Huelva, I meet some friends and acquintances. It is shortly after 2pm, in the middle of lunch, that I receive the news. The National Director has sent a fax to the Portimão DIC: in it, he stipulates the end of my assignment and requests my return to Faro. Today, October 2nd, is my 48th birthday; this is not the present I wanted, but one that I was expecting. Basically, this brings to an end a campaign of defamation and insults that I have been the target of since the start of the case, the whole thing orchestrated and amplified by the British media. The strategy is simple: call into question the investigation and those who lead it and, at the same time, present Portugal as a Third-World country with a legal system and police force worthy of the Middle Ages.
According to a British correspondent, the Prime Minister personally called Stuart Prior to ask for confirmation of my dismissal. Why would the head of the British government be interested in a lowly Portuguese official? We refuse to believe the rumours going around, according to which the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon was dependent on my dismissal. Rumours, of course, nothing more. I cannot help but think that for the first time in its history, the judiciary police has dismissed a simple official from his post because of external pressure. Those wise words addressed by the Marquis of Pombal to his English ally in the year of Our Lord 1759 seem far removed: “I will never accord to you any more than I owe you.”