Are the Tapas Rogatory statements as released by Duarte Levy genuine?

[jassi]

You are funny gilet

You put such effort into presenting your posts in a suitably  serious  way  ...  when what you are actually  saying  is a load of old [ censored word ] nonsense

Ah, but don't you know? - conspiracy is good - just as long as its not aimed at anything McCann 

[ferryman]

You are funny gilet

You put such effort into presenting your posts in a suitably  serious  way  ...  when what you are actually  saying  is a load of old [ censored word ] nonsense

Says s/he willing to dupe any idiot willing to take note that Lee Rainbow said something about "inconsistencies in statements".

I know whose posts I take more note of.

I'm quite certain I'm not alone.

[Cariad]

The whole accusation against the McCanns is a conspiracy theory...with talk of notices,freemasons...involvement of governments..  you would have to be blind not to see that. I see nothing wrong with questioning evidence and its sources.

This development is very interesting and explains alot

That's part of what I don't get. Why is this coming out now? Is this something that is well known and I've just been unaware, or has it passed everyone by?

If those documents aren't accurate, why haven't the Mccanns commented on that?

Would altering police statements then reproducing them be a crime?

Are the originals still available for journalists to get copies of?

Obviously I take everything Gilet says with a pinch of salt after the uniform incident, but the idea that everything I've based my knowledge on may be flawed is making me uncomfortable. Is that what this is designed to do or is there possibly an element of truth to it?
 

[jassi]

That's part of what I don't get. Why is this coming out now? Is this something that is well known and I've just been unaware, or has it passed everyone by?

If those documents aren't accurate, why haven't the Mccanns commented on that?

Would altering police statements then reproducing them be a crime?

Are the originals still available for journalists to get copies of?

Obviously I take everything Gilet says with a pinch of salt after the uniform incident, but the idea that everything I've based my knowledge on may be flawed is making me uncomfortable. Is that what this is designed to do or is there possibly an element of truth to it?

I wondered about that too, which leads me to think that its just McCannites trying to spread more myths.

[Cariad]

I wondered about that too, which leads me to think that its just McCannites trying to spread more myths.

Well, after musing on it for a bit, I've come to the conclusion that if even one word wasn't faithfully reproduced, the Mccanns or Mr Mitchell would be able to say something like " We feel that the public should be aware that the rog's on the internet are not accurate. We are unable to correct the inaccuracies as it is against the law to publish the files" Or something of that ilk.

Given that the discrepancies in the rog's don't look great for the Mccanns and their friends, if they could have discredited them in some way, I reckon they would have.

Following that logic, I don't think they've been tampered with.

All imneo of course and I welcome anyone else's interpretation of the situation.

[slartibartfast]

What, you didn't know that gerry is a member of the strange handshake brigade ?

 

Is there any evidence for that....not that it is important?

[Mr Gray]

Well, after musing on it for a bit, I've come to the conclusion that if even one word wasn't faithfully reproduced, the Mccanns or Mr Mitchell would be able to say something like " We feel that the public should be aware that the rog's on the internet are not accurate. We are unable to correct the inaccuracies as it is against the law to publish the files" Or something of that ilk.

Given that the discrepancies in the rog's don't look great for the Mccanns and their friends, if they could have discredited them in some way, I reckon they would have.

Following that logic, I don't think they've been tampered with.

All imneo of course and I welcome anyone else's interpretation of the situation.

By commenting they would be directing millions of people to statements that may well be false whereas at the moment they have only been read by a handful of people. The internet is almost impossible to police and if the rogs were removed they would simply pop up somewhere else. As you know there is a facebook group with 20,000 followers telling blatant lies that Carter ruck choose to ignore...for the reasons I have just given

[jassi]

By commenting they would be directing millions of people to statements that may well be false whereas at the moment they have only been read by a handful of people. The internet is almost impossible to police and if the rogs were removed they would simply pop up somewhere else. As you know there is a facebook group with 20,000 followers telling blatant lies that Carter ruck choose to ignore...for the reasons I have just given

Really? Not just a handful of illusionists, then?

[Albertini]

As participants, the arguidos in the case the McCanns and Robert Murat were entitled under Portuguese Law to a full copy of the files.

No special dispensation needed. Its standard practice in most countries (exceptions would include North Korea and China) for those directly involved in a case and their lawyers to have copies of all the files in the case. Don't you remember Tony Bennett in his case talking about the tens of thousands of pages which he had to get through, all the big ring binders full of pages and pages of stuff?

How do you think a case would work if the lawyers and those involved in the case could not see the documents relating to the case. It would either become a very Kafkaesque situation or revert to a kind of legal Brian Rix farce.

Great so if the files on the web were incorrect, and if the original presumably correct files were given to the McCann's, why haven't they through Carter Ruck, sought to have any incorrect or altered versions removed from the web?

After all they have/had an internet monitoring group and have removed plenty of stuff from the web already.

Can we conclude that as they haven't removed the PJ or McCann files sites that the information is therefore correct?

[Mr Gray]

Great so if the files on the web were incorrect, and if the original presumably correct files were given to the McCann's, why haven't they through Carter Ruck, sought to have any incorrect or altered versions removed from the web?

After all they have/had an internet monitoring group and have removed plenty of stuff from the web already.

Can we conclude that as they haven't removed the PJ or McCann files sites that the information is therefore correct?

As I posted earlier..



.By commenting they would be directing millions of people to statements that may well be false whereas at the moment they have only been read by a handful of people. The internet is almost impossible to police and if the rogs were removed they would simply pop up somewhere else. As you know there is a facebook group with 20,000 followers telling blatant lies that Carter ruck choose to ignore...for the reason I have given no doubt


You can conclude what you wish...but we do not know the truth

[gilet]

Cariads post is in black, my comments in blue and the quote from Levy in Green.

That's part of what I don't get. Why is this coming out now? Is this something that is well known and I've just been unaware, or has it passed everyone by?

This has been known by me since 2008. I cannot comment on the knowledge of others. It has always surprised me that people take no notice of the fact that these files were never officially released to the public in general. Indeed I notice that the Pamalam Blog states that they were released in that way. It is not true. They were released to journalists only for purposes of researching the case.

My initial reaction to Levy came from the fact that he appeared from nowhere shortly after the disappearance of Madeleine. He was only on a couple of occasions credited in the MSM as a journalist (in bylines where he assisted the main writer of articles). His dominant presence was through a series of blogs which he ran called Enfants Kidnappes, SOS Madeleine, http://duartelevypt.wordpress.com/, etc. He ran at least six or seven blogs in Portuguese, French and English about missing children and paedophilia in the main part. Some of these still remain but others have vanished over the years.

To me he never seemed to be a serious journalist but someone who commented on the journalism of others and who blogged about cases. In that respect he was very similar to Joana Morais who he had a personal liaison with at the height of the case.

After that close encounter with the man she declared him to be "nothing more than a con man, a swindler and a dangerous pathological liar"

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2009/06/exposing-swindler-truth-about.html

Levy was seen at events with Amaral on a number of occasions and described by others who were present as close to Amaral. At no point could he ever be described as an independent journalist reporting on this case. His bias was always to Amaral and against the McCanns.

Whether that bias was behind his illegal release of the files I have no idea, but it is a distinct possibility and I believe it should be taken into account when looking at anything written or released by the man.

He was a sensationalist too. I realise that we are not supposed to use blog material but as we are discussing Levy and this is from his own blog, Enfants Kidnappes, then it may be permitted (mods, please remove if you feel the need to do so).

This came from the Enfants Kidnappes blog of Levy in mid November 2008. It is no longer available there but was repeated on a range of sites including Havern's blog, Websleuths and McCann Files where it remains today.

From McCann Files - 17th November  http://www.mccannfiles.com/id182.html

Anomalies in the case file on DVD
 
For some time, a small part of the complete case file (5,000 out of 30,000 pages!!!) has been accessible to the public. We have published some it it here, noting that it is necessary to be careful in publishing its contents. In fact, this DVD is not complete and only represents around 17% of the total. Our association, like probably all the other professionals in the field of police work, detected anomalies in the case file. In fact, some documents appeared doubtful, seen as suspicious. Some signatures, annotations, drew our attention. We addressed them to whom it may concern to take the information back to Portugal. Following that, and even though we had been aware for several weeks, the journalist Duarte Levy, in statements, yesterday on Portuguese television, revealed that there were documents in the case file which had been tampered with and manipulated. It is there, neither more nor less than errors in writing. No comment. So, be careful what you read on various forums.
 
Death threats!
 
At the start of the broadcast in which the journalist we spoke about above, Duarte Levy, was participating, the director of the Portuguese television channel informed the viewers that Mr Levy had just, at that moment, received death threats on his mobile phone following his latest revelations. These threats are being taken seriously. According to our information, the journalist received two different calls. One from Portugal and the other from the UK, both threatening to kill him! If the revelations made by SOS Madeleine are false, and as a result the parents have nothing to hide, why threaten to kill people? Why does the McCann clan brandish, at the slightest opportunity, a threatening finger towards anyone who would not say the same things as them? Why try to silence the press?

It is not so odd that the man who released the files to the public fails to mention that fact, after all it was probably an illegal act. But it is odd that he tries to claim that the files as released by the Portuguese Authorities had been tampered with. Double bluff, maybe?

If those documents aren't accurate, why haven't the Mccanns commented on that?

I would suggest the answer to that is quite simple. They would be drawing attention to these (probably illegally posted files) if they commented on them. What would any comment by them achieve other than drawing that extra attention?  They cannot prove they are inaccurate as they would have to defy the release rules and post the version they have. The complexity of removing everything they received which journalists did not receive and then defying the rules under which they received their copy would make it a mad exercise. 


An additional point I would make as to why they have not attempted to have them removed.  I don't actually know why but the suggestion of a previous poster does make some sense. The McCanns made an initial attempt to take down material which they owned with a cease and desist letter. I think they found that the law does not make such actions easy. Indeed the protection of copyright online is nigh on impossible to achieve in any context. On top of the fact that in the case, the McCanns would have the added problem in that they do not own the files and have no copyright law to assist them. Portuguese authorities would also find it nigh on impossible to restrict online publication in other domains. And as soon as one site was prevented from hosting them, another would appear.

Would altering police statements then reproducing them be a crime?

Not being a lawyer and more particularly not being a Portuguese lawyer I could not answer that definitively but it would seem likely. Even reproducing them wholesale without alteration may well be a crime in Portugal. It certainly goes against the spirit in which they were released to journalists.


Are the originals still available for journalists to get copies of?

I don't know for certain. But I would suspect not. The case has been reopened and therefore there is possibly no access for anyone other than those involved in the current investigation at the moment. There is a chance that the re-opened case is not listed as the same case as the original one and therefore the files are available but I don't know the intricacies of Portuguese law well enough to comment on that.


Obviously I take everything Gilet says with a pinch of salt after the uniform incident, but the idea that everything I've based my knowledge on may be flawed is making me uncomfortable. Is that what this is designed to do or is there possibly an element of truth to it?

Interesting turn of phrase, "uniform incident". I posted a comment from a professional handler. Our interpretation of the meaning of that comment differed. To me that is a difference of opinion. To you, an incident. Mmm...

If you doubt my word about Levy, read Joana Morais about him. You may or may not be more comfortable trusting her.

If you doubt my word about Levy and the documents, do some research, and ask yourself some questions.

Here are a few questions that I might suggest.

Why has no other journalist or source has ever produced copies of these files for the public to read?

Why do they only exist on blogs run by anti-McCanns and not on any official site or MSM site?

Would you trust a friend of Gerry McCann if he had posted the files online? (Levy was (and maybe still is) a friend of Amaral back in 2008.)

How did Levy choose the people he delivered the copies of the original DVD to?

Why did he deliberately delay the second batch of information he released till the very time when the McCanns at the end of November 2008 were meeting Isabel Duarte to start proceedings to sue Amaral? What prevented the Tapas Rogatories from being released back in the middle of the year when he handed over the original DVD to various people?

Who is Levy? He still does not appear to be a real journalist. His "work" seems to be commenting on journalism on his FB page and on blogs.

eta My error. Levy did not run Enfants Kidnappes site. That was another Brussels blogger.

[Cariad]

Obviously I take everything Gilet says with a pinch of salt after the uniform incident, but the idea that everything I've based my knowledge on may be flawed is making me uncomfortable. Is that what this is designed to do or is there possibly an element of truth to it?

Interesting turn of phrase, "uniform incident". I posted a comment from a professional handler. Our interpretation of the meaning of that comment differed. To me that is a difference of opinion. To you, an incident. Mmm...

Since the bloody line has been attributed to me in it's own thread, it's been upgraded from an incident to a 'serious incident'.

I take note of you post. I don't really know what to think about it all. As I said, it makes me uncomfortable. I shall do some more research.

[gilet]

Since the bloody line has been attributed to me in it's own thread, it's been upgraded from an incident to a 'serious incident'.

I take note of you post. I don't really know what to think about it all. As I said, it makes me uncomfortable. I shall do some more research.

Not sure what your first paragraph means. "Own thread"?

I am grateful that you are taking note of the post I made about Levy, the only source we have for not only the PJ Files, the separate Tapas Rogatory Statements and the Dog Videos.

I might add the bizarre claim made on those videos by Levy that he owns the copyright to them. On what grounds does a very dodgy journalist claim ownership of the videos created as part of a police investigation by the PJ? Just a fantasy I suspect.

One correction to my previous post. The Enfants Kidnappes blog did not belong to Levy.

One addition to my previous post. Levy has in the past claimed to be Simon de Bruxelles, journalist at the Times. He is not that person.

[jassi]

Is Levy the latest ENEMY - to be trashed in his turn like Amaral and Grime ?

[Jean-Pierre]

Is Levy the latest ENEMY - to be trashed in his turn like Amaral and Grime ?

I think his former g/f, Joana Morais - got there first.