Radio 5 Live Interview 24/04/2014Transcript by me.
Rachel Burden:British police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann , say they are looking at 18 break-ins into villas
on the Algarve by a lone intruder, 6 have come to light following an appeal last month with 5 involving alleged
sexual assaults against young British girls.
Paul Luckman is the publisher of the English newspaper The Portugal News, and has followed this whole story, the
whole investigation over the past few years very closely, morning Paul
Paul Luckman: Good morning
Rachel Burden: So do you think the MET police are genuinely onto something new here?
Paul Luckman: Umm I think I have to question it, umm we have certainly heard nothing of these cases & anything involving
foreigners comes pretty quickly to our ears, it's inevitable, we are the largest English paper in Portugal, you get to
hear about these things. Umm.. I noticed locally & certainly nationally, none of the national papers have picked up
on this story & they have extremely good police contacts here, I don't think anybody here is taking this seriously,
and you really begin to wonder , err huh, I wonder after all the MET have spent on this case if they are not
looking to almost justify, were looking at what 7 million pounds at the minute.
Rachel Burden:Yeah so, so Paul just to be clear are you saying that you doubt the reports of these break-ins or..just the fact that they might be connected in some way to Madeleine's disappearance?
Paul Luckman:Do you know I'm not in a position to say that definitely but there have been no reports on this, umm at any time,
I find this extremely strange, I've searched through all our archives, umm nothing has come to our ears or been
reported.
Rachel Burden:What about this report of a 10 year old girl back in 2005, in PDL now that's only recent that information, we don’t
know why it’s only come to light recently, there are all sorts of potential explanations, it could be that the child
herself didn’t report it at the the time, They have to look closely at something like that don’t they?
Paul Luckman:Well, the police will look closely and I think that the attitude, some of the comments that I heard yesterday Umm
I believe will do little to create good relations between the English police & the Portuguese police, who are trying
very hard to get this resolved, they have reopened the case.
Rachel Burden:Are they cooperating with the Met?
Paul Luckman:Yes, totally errm this suggestion that they're not, I read headlines in the UK this morning
arrests imminent umm complete nonsense, umm, the Met cannot make & I'm sure there not even claiming.....they can't come into
Portugal & make arrests, but you'll remember that we had a situation like this 2 or 3 months ago where there was
mass coverage that they were arriving to make arrests & it just petered into nothing, there was nothing, it was just a regular visit, errm we had a situation where the Met stated that the Portuguese police had not told them about a Cape Verdian who apparently was accused of I think 3 rapes of children & yet we had it directly from the police that infact they had briefed the Met & the McCanns 6 months earlier in Lisbon even with a powerpoint
presentation on this case.
So these things don't do an awful lot to help relations & errm let's see what happens, as I say I'm very surprised there's no coverage at all, not from any of the major daily’s here in Portugal this morning & they are extraordinarily well connected, much more so than ourselves of course, just no mention at all.
Rachel Burden:Well as you say we'll wait to see what happens.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0418mms