' After his efforts to find Madeleine’s body in the Arada Dam, little was heard about him, until the dramatic opening of the trial of Gonçalo Amaral and his four fellow detectives at Faro, on the Algarve Coast, in October this year. For on the first day of the trial, there was a dramatic announcement. Leonor Cipriano, the person bringing the allegation against the five detectives that she had been tortured in prison, announced that she was dropping her legal team and that she would now be represented by the dodgy lawyer from Madeira, Marcos Aragão Correio.
There was a sensational revelation early in the trial. During the early days of the trial, Mr Aragão Correia said on the record that Método 3 themselves, acting on behalf of the McCanns, had asked him to get involved in the Joana Cipriano case. He went on to claim that the McCanns, via Método 3, “ordered him to do an investigation” into allegations regarding the accusation by Leonor Cipriano. In short, the allegation was that she had been ‘tortured’ by Gonçalo Amaral’s detectives, and that Gonçalo Amaral had covered it all up. At the same time, Aragão Correia - who, it will be remembered, was described as a humble ‘good Samaritan’ in article about him privately funding the search in the lake - claimed on oath that no-one was currently paying him to bring the case against Amaral and his fellow-detectives.
This sensational revelation was put by the Portuguese newspaper, Correio da Manhã, to Método 3. It must be remembered that the enormous payments to Método 3 - said to total hundreds of thousands of pounds - were provided by the Helping to Find Madeleine Trust Fund. And in turn, the Helping to Find Madeleine Trust Fund had obtained its funds on the pretext using them to ‘find Madeleine’. Pensioners had given their weekly pension. Children had given their weekly pocket money. People in their thousands had donated money based on emotive stories of how Madeleine had apparently been abducted.
According to Correio da Manhã, the private detective agency denied any connection whatsoever to the lawyer, and also denied making him any payments. As Correio da Manhã was understandably quick to point out to their readers, Método 3’s denial was simple not credible, since, they said: “Aragão Correia has already admitted that he received money from Método 3 to pay his 'expenses' when he made the searches to find Madeleine's corpse in the reservoir. Though they didn’t say in in so many words, there is only one interpretation that can be put on Método 3’s denial of involvement with Aragão Correia and denial of paying him. They are lying.
Aragão Correia had earlier told the press that he had received a ‘vision’ or a ‘supernatural indication’ as to the whereabouts of Madeleine, which had prompted his interest in the first place. It was not clear from this whether this came before or after Monday 6 May 2007, the day that Mr Aragão Correia claimed he had been told by underworld sources that Madeleine had been abducted, killed, and thrown in a lake.
He claimed that he had gone to the Algarve ‘at his own expense’. He told the court on oath: “Método 3’asked me to try to get involved in the Joana case to obtain statements from Leonor and her brother to try to understand if she was tortured by the police, nothing else”.
Dealing with suspicions that in agreeing to defend Leonor Cipriano, he was being paid by someone who is very interested in ensuring that Gonçalo Amaral is convicted of a crime, or at least that his reputation is damaged - because of his public comments about Madeleine probably having died in Apartment 5A in Praia da Luz – he retorted to the court: “I don't get paid in pounds or in euros. I am here for principles, and my objective is to set free Leonor Cipriano”.
During the court session held on Monday 3 November, it emerged that Marcos Aragão Correia had made efforts to do a deal with the four detectives under Amaral’s command. The lawyer defending the four detectives said he had received an approach from Aragão Correia, proposing a very dirty deal.
Aragão Correia, he said, had asked him to consider a deal whereby, in exchange for the four detectives all agreeing to testify against Goncalo Amaral, and state that it was Amaral who gave the order to torture Leonor Cipriano, he would ensure that the charges against the four detectives were re-drawn so that their sentences would be greatly reduced. Hey would not get a custodial sentence, he promised.
In court he blustered that to offer such a deal was ‘normal procedure’, adding that although he had been paid by the McCanns, via Método 3, in the past, he was ‘no longer’ being paid by them. But by then - by all accounts - he had lost all credibility with the court. So had Leonor Cipriano, with members of the public openly laughing at her preposterous lies and constant changes of story.
The defence lawyer for the four detectives, Pragal Colaço, commented: “This proposed deal was not ethically correct. Resorting to a deal of this nature results from an attitude which that demonstrates a certain dementia” - in other words, he was saying that the deal proposed by Mr Aragão Correia was due to his ‘madness’. Gonçalo Amaral’s lawyer, António Cabrita, was not of course notified about this dirty deal
The lawyer for the four detectives, Pragal Colaço, didn’t deny the conversation with Marcos Aragão Correia. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Mr Aragão Correia was frustrated that he could not clinch his proposed dirty deal with Mr Colaço and Mr Cabrita. The word ‘cabrita’, in Portuguese, means ‘goat’. On one occasion, Mr Correio snapped and called Mr Cabrita ‘a goat ’.
Questioned about the deal, Pragal Colaço preferred not to comment, saying that he feared possible ‘reprisals’ from the Portuguese lawyers’ association, the Lawyers’ Order.
He said on the record: “I don’t want any more disciplinary processes. I was notified by the Lawyers’ Order about an issue where I made a statement four years ago, and this happens. I don’t want any problems because I know that the Lawyers’ Order keeps persecuting me and I don’t want any further trouble. Any lay person is able to understand that a proposal to cut a deal that is made in order to condemn Dr Gonçalo Amaral means that this process is being used for purposes that are not part of the process”.
The deal to ‘get’ Amaral was preceded by news of an e-mail. Mr Aragão Correio, before proposing his dirty deal, said to Mr Colaço: “I possesses an e-mail that incriminates Gonçalo Amaral. It accuses him being present at the torture and beating of Ms Cipriano”. He said: “I hold information that Mr Paulo Cristóvão sent an e-mail to a friend of mine at the Policia Judiciária, in which he confessed that there was torture, not by him, but by Mr Gonçalo Amaral himself. We may get to the point where we have to present this e-mail in court”. It seemed to most observers in court a desperate ploy to worry Amaral and his legal team. He had claimed that the alleged e-mail was sent approximately 3 years ago [in 2005] by one of the detectives (now a former detective) now on trial, Paulo Pereira Cristóvão, to a common friend who works at the Policia Judiciária.
Aragão had said that he was not ready to reveal the document ‘yet’. In it, Pereira Cristóvão allegedly confirmed that ‘four days before Leonor’s confession’ there was indeed ‘torture and beatings’ and that it was the Portimão Police team, led by Gonçalo Amaral, who were responsible for the assault. Amaral, it was claimed, would not only have known about the details of the torture and beatings facts but was also responsible for issuing orders “for every possible method to be used in order to force a confession from Leonor”.
It was following the revelation of this supposed ‘trump card’ by Mr Aragão Correia to Mr Colaço that he proposed a deal, apparently something that is not permitted by the Portuguese penal law process. Correia is alleged to have offered the four defendant detectives the prospect of suspended sentences. If they confessed, stating that Gonçalo Amaral gave the order to assault Leonor Cipriano, and that he had also personally participated in the torture and beatings of Leonor Cipriano, he would guarantee a reduced charge for each of the four and a suspended sentence. He made this offer despite the fact that the accusation is brought by the Public Ministry, not by Aragão Correia himself - and the penalty is decided by the Court that is constituted by three judges and four jurors, a panel of seven.
The Police Officers of Portugual (the Policia Judiciara) have a trade union - or perhaps more correctly, a staff association - the Association of Criminal Investigation Employees (ASFIC). Its President, Mr Carlos Anjos, was quick to speak out against the dirty deal and in support of Gonçalo Amaral and his four detectives.
Carlos Anjos, speaking about the case, recalled that: “The only people [throughout this case] to always maintain the same version of events - because they are the truth - are the four detectives. [By contrast], just look at the contradictions in Leonor Cipriano’s various statements - as well as the evidence given by the Prison Governor, the Chief Prison Officer and the Consultant Prison Doctor on the health of Ms Cipriano.
It was clear, said Carlos Anjos, that Gonçalo Amaral was the real target of this trial. He was the one individual in all this that the prosecution really wanted to crucify, he explained to the media. Carlos Anjos said that the official response of ASFIC to this grubby, dishonest deal, was a firm ‘No’. He said: “I refused straightaway because I don’t cut deals. The five are all innocent. We stand or fall together. This lawyer - Marcos Aragão Correia - worked for Método 3”.
The former Director of the National Judicial Police (PJ), the ‘Judge-Adviser Mr Santos Cabral, also spoke out and said there had been no culpability by Gonçalo Amaral in the conduct of the complex investigation into the ‘disappearance’ of Joana Cipriano.
The dramatic revelations about Marcos Aragão Correia having been enlisted by Método 3 to pursue Gonçalo Amaral, and the news that there had been an attempt to persuade the four detectives to say that they had been ordered to torture Leonor Cipriano, prompted respected Portuguese University Professor, Dr Franciso Moita Flores, to pen an article in a Portuguese newspaper, Correio da Manhã, about this court case against Gonçalo Amaral. Amongst other robust comments, clearly uttered with real feeling, he wrote:
“The trial of the possible torture on the mother of Joana is revealing episodes of a perversion that do not cease to amaze us…the Police are not angels, nor were they sent by Christ to Earth. Their profession hardens them, makes them stubborn, suspicious, and determined…and a crime so heinous as this one [the murder of Joana Cipriano] can lead even a Police officer to lose his head and to commit an unforgivable foolishness [like an assault on the perpetrator] .
“Now the trial has arrived and the evidence is unfolding...Leonor Cipriano has confessed that she helped to kill her daughter on a given day, and that the beating by the police was on the day immediately following [her confession]. It is an absurdity.
”The astonishment [at this absurdity] only increases when we learn that Leonor Cipriano cannot even identify any of the Police officers who allegedly attacked her.
“Gonçalo Amaral is clearly being persecuted, not because of the Leonor Cipriano case, but by the agents of Método 3, the detective agency hired by Madeleine's parents. This simply confirms that this case is not about justice. In fact, it is an abuse of the court process, a disgrace, a heinous farce. And all of this is happening for the ugliest of reasons - reasons which are also part of our human condition”.
One final question might be asked about Correio’s dirty little proposal. How would it serve the cause of justice and good policing in Portugal to convict only someone – Amaral - who is no longer with the force, and leave working as serving police officers two men (Marques Bom and Cardoso) who were either willing to torture a witness, actively cover it up, or both?
The other two inspectors, Chief Inspector Leonel, one of the most respected men ever to have worked for the PJ, and Paulo Pereira Cristovao, have already resigned from the Portuguese police over the affair.
The involvement of the Lawyers' Order
A further indication of sinister forces at work in this case came with the involvement of The Portuguese Lawyer’s Order, or the Portuguese Bar (the Ordem dos Advogados). They requested the status of ‘Assistente’ in this case - similar to the role of ‘Amicus Curia’ in the English courts - a ‘friend of the court’ who is supposed to assist the court to achieve the ‘right’ result. Their request - which was granted by the courts, was to become involved in the proceedings against Amaral and his four fellow detectives “in order to assist the public prosecution (Ministerio Publico) in finding out the truth”.
The head of the Portuguese Lawyer’s Order, Mr Marinho Pinto is a man that has often made public statements to maintain and strengthen the abduction theory in the Madeleine McCann case. Many Portuguese lawyers have regarded him as guilty on many occasions of exceeding his role by his forthright criticisms of the Policia Judiciara in the McCann case.
In this particular case, it appears that Marinho Pinto himself has been proposed in a list of possible witness to come and make a statement in court about the Cipriano case. Although Mr Marinho is always keen to come and make statements on TV, it appears that he was somehow less comfortable giving those statements in a court of law. Therefore this status of ‘Assistente’, granted to the Lawyer’s Order, means that he cannot be heard as a witness anymore - very convenient for Mr Marinho Pinto as he continues his attacks against the PJ in the media.
There are many concerns here. For a start, the obvious links between Metodo 3 and Cipriano's lawyer, Aragao Correio? Then there is the likely link between the extreme statements made by Marinho Pinto about the McCann case and Goncalo Amaral, and his sudden unwillingness to speak personally in court on the Joana Cipriano case. Add to that the fact that the Lawyers Order in Portugal, which represents the country’s lawyers, continues to deliberately prefer to attack the PJ at the expense of truth and justice. On top of all that is the fact that the judge in charge of the process accepted the Lawyer‘s Order's application to become an ‘Assistente in the Cipriano process.
This case just gives us great insights into who was interested, for whatever reason, in having the investigation into the Madeleine McCann case collapse. Maybe Mr Marinho Pinto would have something to say about that.
RTP reported on 18 November 2008:
The Directorship of the Prison Service has acted after the denouncement of her made by the Chief Prison Officer over the pressures on her to change her report on Leonor Cipriano’s injuries. After the Chief Prison Officer of Odemira Penitentiary, António Maia, told the court that the Prison Governor suggested to her to change the report about Leonor Cipriano’s bruises, from a likely fall off the stairs to torture and beatings, the General Directorship of the Prison Service has acted.
The Prison Governor, Ana Calado, is already facing a disciplinary process, after the Prison Service requested the Court in Faro to send a copy of the statements made by António Maia in the court session of 28 of October. The Chief Prison Officer said he suffered pressure from the Prison Governor to frame the policemen. The lawyers defending Goncalo Amaral have already announced their intention to bring proceedings against Ana Calado.
Continued...........
