Former Portuguese detective Gonçalo Amaral wins appeal in damages trial.

[G-Unit]

I think a few members here might have something to say if unproven accusations that were being lever at them were deemed to be perfectly acceptable in law.
But it seems it is in Portugal.

The judge of the lower court said Amaral's book would have been OK if an ordinary person had written it. Her judgement was not about the contents of the book, it was about his rights and duties as an ex policeman. The appeal judges disagreed with her interpretation of the laws relating to ex policemen. She chose the grounds and was defeated. I'm sure she would have used the contents of the book as her battleground if she could, clearly she didn't think it was an option.

[pathfinder73]

Short transcript on this topic from CMTV special, "Maddie, the Mystery"

Anchor João Ferreira - I would like for you to tell us in detail your explanation for the disappearance of the body, you have a thesis..

Gonçalo Amaral - No, I don't have one.

Anchor - ... in this book...

Gonçalo Amaral - No, in that book there isn't anything concerning what we just saw me saying on the news piece that was shown. Because these are elements, these are information that appeared afterwards and were never investigated. It's just an hypothesis, and when considering that hypothesis...

Anchor - An hypothesis that Madeleine's body could have been hidden, could have been incinerated, right?

Gonçalo Amaral - There's an information here, in the police, that mentions that. That in a night, three figures were seen carrying a bag, entering the church...

Anchor - In the Praia da Luz church.

Gonçalo Amaral - In that church was a coffin of a woman, a woman from the United Kingdom...

Anchor - Of a British woman.

Gonçalo Amaral - ... and in the following day that coffin was transferred to Ferreira do Alentejo to be incinerated. But no one is saying that the parents did that, or saying who did that. It's something that someone who is on the field investigating has to ascertain, must investigate thoroughly.

Anchor - But you concede that hypothesis, that possibility of Madeleine's cadaver being taken to the church, and then incinerated is a plausible hypothesis...

Gonçalo Amaral - We're practically starting by the end, first is the disappearance, if you allow me to explain, to explain to the viewers... [overlapping speech]

Anchor - I'll allow you, but just so not to lose this train of thought, is this hypothesis plausible for you?

Gonçalo Amaral - It is plausible, and I say plausible in this sense, that that body would fit underneath the cadaver that was already there.

Anchor - And it would fit?

Gonçalo Amaral - It would, yes. At the time, when I was already out of the Judiciary Police I obtained the opinion of people that dealt with that, of funeral agencies, and they said that it was a possibility. It's an opinion that is not officialized but it's a possibility. If it happened like that or not, we don't know, there are several hypotheses to make a body disappear.

https://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2016/04/investigate-incinerated-body-thesis.html

[Carana]

When did the lady he's alluding to pass away?

[jassi]

When did the lady he's alluding to pass away?

3 or 4 weeks after Madeleine disappeared, I think.

[pathfinder73]

When did the lady he's alluding to pass away?

Not sure but a month was mentioned so SAT 2 June 2007 is a possibility when there were strange ping gaps. I've posted all about that weekend on the private forum.

[Carana]

3 or 4 weeks after Madeleine disappeared, I think.

While he was in charge, then?

How would the Grand Scenic fit into that?

[pathfinder73]

While he was in charge, then?

How would the Grand Scenic fit into that?

A bag seen carried in not a car.

[pathfinder73]

"It had been commented on that there had been a continuing bad smell around the doorway of the Church."

http://patbrownprofiling.blogspot.com/2012/03/criminal-profiling-topic-of-day-on.html

Is there anything to back up that rumour?

[Carana]

Thanks for that short transcript.

In other words, he doesn't know any more than anyone else does (aside from whoever took her out of that flat).

I still don't see how this fits with stories of non-missing pink blankets, a non-existent blue tennis bag, non-existent gory stuff in the Scenic, dumped at sea, stored in some complicit stranger's freezer and then back to being cremated under some dear old soul back in PdL without anyone noticing.

[pathfinder73]

Thanks for that short transcript.

In other words, he doesn't know any more than anyone else does (aside from whoever took her out of that flat).

I still don't see how this fits with stories of non-missing pink blankets, non-existent gory stuff in the Scenic, dumped at sea, stored in some complicit stranger's freezer and then back to being cremated under some dear old soul back in PdL without anyone noticing.

Somebody did notice and it would be late at night. Only somebody with their own key could enter.

[Carana]

"It had been commented on that there had been a continuing bad smell around the doorway of the Church."

http://patbrownprofiling.blogspot.com/2012/03/criminal-profiling-topic-of-day-on.html

Is there anything to back up that rumour?

Nope. According to whom, besides that Anonymous poster?

[pathfinder73]

Nope. According to whom, besides that Anonymous poster?

From any printed reports at the time.

[Carana]

Somebody did notice and it would be late at night. Only somebody with their own key could enter.

Who noticed what?

[pathfinder73]

Who noticed what?

A bagful of bibles obviously. Why else do you carry a bag into church at night? Maybe it was the 3 burglars sneaking in after they got hold of the key.

[carlymichelle]

sorry if already posted
http://portugalresident.com/amaral%E2%80%99s-libel-win-opens-pandora%E2%80%99s-box-on-national-television

A new ‘mood’ has emerged following the successful appeal by former PJ inspector Gonçalo Amaral against €500,000 libel damages awarded to the parents of missing Madeleine McCann.

For the first time “serious figures” formerly connected to the government and PJ are questioning the political pressures that effectively shut-down the original Portuguese investigation - allowing nothing to move forwards other than the abduction theory.

Without naming names or pointing fingers, it is clear that Amaral’s victorious return from the cold of litigation has paved the way for less-than-habitually-guarded discussion.

While here CMTV screened a four-way interview late on Saturday night which threw up the issue of ‘plausible leads’ nipped in the bud in the early days - as they simply did not fit with the abduction profile - in Edinburgh former ambassador and human rights activist Craig Murray has weighed onto the scene, outlining the sort of pressure with which Portugal had to contend.

“I am going to come straight out with this”, he wrote in a post following news of Amaral’s appeal court win. “British diplomatic staff were under direct instruction to support the McCanns far beyond the usual and to put pressure on the Portuguese authorities over the case.

“I have direct information that more than one of those diplomatic staff found the McCanns less than convincing and their stories inconsistent. Embassy staff were perturbed to be ordered that British authorities were to be present at every contact between the McCanns and Portuguese police.

“This again is absolutely not the norm. On a daily basis more British citizens have contact with foreign authorities than the total staff of the FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office). It would be simply impossible to give that level of support to everybody”.

John Buck, Murray’s direct boss in the FCO when he was head of Cyprus Section, was the British ambassador in Portugal when three-year-old Madeleine went missing in May, 2007.

“He and his staff were concerned by contradictions in the McCann’s story”, Murray continues. “The Embassy warned, in writing, that being perceived as too close to the McCanns might not prove wise. They demanded the instruction from London be reconfirmed. It was.”

Murray’s post does not dwell on the reasons for this “far beyond usual” support, but he concedes “that it might have put some psychological pressure on the Portuguese investigators and prosecuting officers in their determinations”.

Talking on CMTV in the early hours of Sunday morning, former PJ director Manuel Rodrigues left little doubt that it had.

In a one-hour “special” which went out between 11.30 and 12.40, Rodrigues and former Minister for Internal Administration Rui Pereira both lamented British interference which, Rodrigues concedes, may ensure that “blame” in this apparently unsolvable nine-year-old mystery “dies a spinster”.

Why a faithful reconstruction of the night of Madeleine’s disappearance was never achieved he still does not know, he explained.

“Someone stopped it. Don’t ask me to name names. We have already talked about all the assistance the (McCann) couple received from people directly connected with the British government. We have talked about the British government and the British police. I can’t interpret it any other way”.

Rodrigues referred to the “pure ingenuousness” of Portuguese authorities, allowing forensic tests on evidence recovered to be allowed to take place in a British laboratory so that there was no whiff of uncertainty.

In the first report, 15 alleles out of 19 that made up Madeleine’s DNA appeared, he said.

Then, in a second report, all the alleles had “disappeared completely”.

Amaral too had his moment to outline some the ‘plausible hypotheses’ that emerged in the early days as his team shifted its focus from the likelihood of an abduction.

A late-night sighting of three figures entering Luz church with a large bag coincided with the existence of a coffin inside the church, he said, into which Madeleine’s body could have been placed.

The coffin - holding the remains of an elderly British resident - was taken the following day for cremation in the Alentejo.

Amaral stressed nonetheless that the book ‘Maddie: The Truth of the Lie’ that the McCanns have sought to ban is not ‘his truth’ - nor indeed factual truth - but the opinion of the PJ in September of 2007 when it became clear their efforts were about to be archived.

Since that time - and even when Scotland Yard became involved in 2011 and vowed to ‘peel back the layers’ of the mystery as if peeling an onion - none of those original lines of investigation have ever been revisited, resulting in the situation in which millions of pounds have been spent getting nowhere, or as Amaral put it: “going down a one-way street”.

That the four-way interview went out at such a late hour suggests CMTV is still being careful about how it presents this case, but Amaral’s ‘victory’ for freedom of expression would appear to have lifted the lid on a Pandora’s Box shut tight from mainstream media for almost nine years.

In UK, the Sun leaked a lurid colour page promising an exposé on “Maddie Cop’s Sick Secret” on Sunday morning.

It turned out to be nothing more than the rehash of an ‘Amaral-bashing’ story by the Express a year before in which British people donating to his legal expenses were tarnished as ‘online trolls’.

But it served to highlight that ‘pressure’ in Britain to stick to the abduction theory and demonise everything else could still be at work