It is a really weird type of truth seeker who fails to register the dereliction of duty which has occurred at almost every stage of Madeleine McCann’s case. I know what the definition of with holding evidence is, but I think Ricardo Paiva's actions are much worse.
Some of us have no doubt 'lost' an inconvenient file ... but what this man did is mind boggling ... yet the cite has been decried because of its author as a neat deflection from the fact that the information is accurate. Job done.
Thesuggestion seems to be that all the information was checked out before being discarded as not being of relevance to the inquiry.
The absolute lie to that is that there were numerous pictures and CCTV images of children, many of whom looked like Madeleine McCann, one of whom might have been Madeleine McCann, but Ricardo Paiva did not bother to show them to Madeleine McCann’s parents.
Why not? Because he believed Madeleine to be dead.
That is what is being defended and condoned.
NSY did not reopen the investigation into Madeleine's abduction because they had new evidence - they reopened it because of the evidence which already existed in the files and which had not been actioned - I wonder how much of that came from the files Ricardo Paiva sat on for two years, and which he would be sitting on yet but for opening his mouth in court about them in answer to a question from Isabel Duarte.
Portuguese police 'ignored hundreds of sightings' in search for Madeleine McCannPortuguese police faced growing pressure to reopen the Madeleine McCann investigation yesterday, amid claims they ignored potential sightings of the missing girl.
Detectives
have refused to investigate hundreds of clues about the disappearance, including photographs of children said to bear a 'shocking' resemblance to the blonde youngster.
They include a cluster of sightings in Italy and Spain which could hold the key to solving the mystery and ending the years of heartache suffered by her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.
But instead
they have gone unchecked, marked as 'irrelevant' after the case was shelved, and left to gather dust in a police archive.
The McCanns' private detectives, who are continuing the search for the missing child, did not even know the dossier existed until a Portuguese policeman let slip a reference to it during a legal hearing.
Inspector Ricardo Paiva said police had received hundreds of tip-offs from witnesses convinced they had seen Madeleine and knew where she was being held.
They sent in photographs of children and of locations which they believed were being used by her abductor, believing that police would investigate their claims.
But arrogant detectives were so convinced by their own theory that Madeleine died on the night she disappeared, and that her parents faked her abduction, that
they made no attempt to check the sightings.
The McCanns' lawyer, Isabel Duarte, has seen the dossier. She said every single statement had the same phrase scrawled across it: 'This is not relevant to the investigation.'
She said: 'I was shocked at how much was in there, and that
absolutely nothing had been done to follow any of it up.'Every piece of information was treated the same way - Ricardo Paiva writes on it "This is not relevant to the investigation".
'He is the witness who declared in court that he believed Madeleine is dead. You cannot find a person when you are not looking for them.'
Gerry and Kate McCann
Unaware: Gerry and Kate McCann, pictured being mobbed by the media this week, were not told about many of the potential clues to their daughter's whereabouts
Mr Paiva gave evidence at a legal hearing over a controversial book, written by his former boss, Goncalo Amaral.
He admitted that Mr Amaral's insistence that Madeleine died on May 3, 2007, meant the police investigation had failed to consider other options.
Mrs Duarte said
they had not investigated any tip-offs since the case was officially shelved, in July 2008, when the McCanns were cleared as official suspects in the investigation.
She said information had continued to pour in from potential witnesses and even from other police forces in Europe, but was
ignored, even when the clues including photographs of girls who looked like Madeleine.
The lawyer said: 'Some of them are very, very similar to Madeleine. But Kate and Gerry had never been shown them.
'There was information from Leicestershire Police, French police, Spanish police, and again
nothing was done about it.'Kate and Gerry did not even know this file existed until this week. I am going to give a copy of the file to them so that their private investigation team can follow up the information in it.
'But I am angry because it is the Portuguese investigative police who should be doing this job.
‘They have the power and the capability to do it. It is they who should be doing it, not Kate and Gerry.'
Mr and Mrs McCann, both 41, will discover next week if they have won their court bid to keep an injunction which bans Mr Amaral from repeating his vile claims that their daughter died in a 'tragic accident' and that they faked her abduction to cover up the death.
Their spokesman Clarence Mitchell said they had been shocked to discover the full extent of the Portuguese police's failure to investigate Madeleine's disappearance.
He said it had confirmed their worst fears about the investigation, saying: 'They were shocked when they went through the file and saw what was in it, and even worse what little had been done to follow any of it up.
'Kate and Gerry have consistently known that potential fresh information was not being properly followed up, if at all.
'The tragedy of this case, which once again has been highlighted by this, is what little was done to find Madeleine.
‘Kate and Gerry will have to do it themselves as they have been doing. They are the only ones looking for her.'
Mr Paiva said he could not discuss the case. He said: 'I cannot comment, in accordance with Portuguese law.'
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250419/Portuguese-police-ignored-hundreds-sightings-search-Madeleine-McCann.html#ixzz38zvMdDpG
