Portuguese police have ignored hundreds of potential new leads in the Madeleine McCann case because of their belief that she is already dead, it has been claimed.
By Fiona Govan in Lisbon
7:30AM GMT 12 Feb 2010
Details of possible sightings from across Europe have been forwarded to Portuguese investigators by local forces but no effort has been made to follow them up.
Kate and Gerry McCann, both 41, learnt of the existence of the dossier of new information, including tips offs, license plate numbers and even photographs of children who could be their daughter, during a court hearing in Lisbon that ended Wednesday.
"They were shocked at what was in it and, even worse, what little had been done to follow any of it up,” said Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for the McCann family.
"Kate and Gerry have consistently known that potential fresh information was not being properly followed up, if at all.”
The potential new leads date from July 2008 when the case was officially shelved by Portuguese police after they failed to find any evidence of the missing girl.
The confidential dossier contains hundreds of statements that could prove useful in solving the mystery of Madeleine’s disappearance from an Algarve holiday apartment on May 3, 2007.
The McCanns’ legal team became aware of the file during court proceedings as part of a libel trial brought by the couple against the former detective, Goncalo Amaral, who led the initial investigation.
The McCanns’ Portuguese lawyer, Isabel Duarte, accused current Algarve police chief Ricardo Paiva of deliberately ignoring the leads because they did not fit in with the theory that Madeleine’s parents were involved in her disappearance.
Last month he appeared in court as a witness in support of former colleague Mr Amaral, who has written a book alleging that the girl died in the holiday apartment and her parents fabricated a tale of abduction after hiding her body.
"Every piece of information (in the dossier of potential new leads) was treated the same way - Ricardo Paiva writes on it 'this is not relevant to the investigation',” Mrs Duarte said from her office in the Portuguese capital on Thursday.
“He believed and to this day still believes that Madeleine is dead. I asked him: ‘How can you find a person when you are not looking for them?’”.
She said some of the leads seemed credible, including a cluster of sightings by independent eye witnesses in northern Italy, and had been forwarded by police forces in the UK, Spain, France and Italy but ignored by their Portuguese counterparts.
Copies of the files would now be passed to the McCanns to be followed up by private investigators hired to search for their daughter.
"But I am angry because it is the Portuguese investigative police who should be doing this job,” Mrs Duarte, added.
"They have the power and capability to do it. It is they who should be doing it not and not my clients."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/7215353/Portuguese-police-ignored-Madeleine-McCann-leads.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231757/Madeleine-McCann-investigator-didnt-listen-ANY-tip-offs-given-hotline--squandered-500-000.html'
Johan Selle, the director of operations at iJet, the US firm that managed the Find Madeleine phone line, revealed that for a year nobody even asked his company if they could listen to any of the calls received.
Mr Selle said his operators, in Annapolis, Virginia, had answered 'hundreds of calls', but the information seemed wasted - possibly squandering valuable leads.
He said: 'We delivered Oakley a report with a summary of the calls and said if they wanted to come back they could listen to the recording, but nobody did.
'For someone with an understanding of the case it would be very easy for some to say that maybe 80 or 90 per cent of the calls were hogwash, but there may be a percentage where one would say maybe we should listen to this one or listen to that one. But our understanding is that this never took place '
