The only problem with the translation is that it is rubbish. "She said that the front door was the main door to enter the apartment, situated at the back."
C'mon. That is gibberish, as spoken by someone who's first language is not English, or by Google. Was the front door really at the back? Was Margaret nipping out and in of the patio doors, much like the McCanns?
Was the man hiding in bushes that don't exist outside the front? (NB Car park, I mean here.)
Was the man hiding in bushes outside the rear? (NB Patio doors this time.) Ok, what bushes? When did we get bushes behind 5A? We got bushes not in the translation but in the Mirror article. Oh, merde!
So let me take the Mirror bushes away and return to the translation.
Back door aka patio. Man is in the garden, or somewhere up the steps, or at the garden gate. Or at least in the alley. Not a mention of any of these. Any of these would raise suspicion, and not about rats. Rats = normal, man in garden at 00:30 = big trouble.
Front door aka car park. A pedestrian walkway in front of 5A, then a metre high wall, then a car park. Nowhere to hide with a motion sensitive light. It probably does get rats, but how was Margaret alerted to this?
No, Shining, sorry but I think you have this one wrong.
It is perfectly understandable that Margearet got the front and back mixed up. All forum world did too, because various reports both in papers and witness statements got them muddled as well. In fact in the early days on here I had to make a big thing out of pointing out that the steps and patio were at the back, cos it was hopeless discussing it when different people got it the wrong way around.
Margaret would not have gone home through the rear patio doors. She could not have locked them after she left. Also as you correctly say the back patio has no buushes to hide behind. It is raised 11 steps above ground level, so no bushes could grow there.
She went out of the front door and IMO either she moved several steps forward, or he was startled and activated the light that apparantly was there at the time.
Maybe, the sensors were directed along the pathway and did not point towards all the outer trees. Maybe they were deliberately directed so that the sensor lights did not unnecessarily waken sleeping residents. We just dont know.
I might add that we had movement sensors in our house and a dog that freely roamed. She never jumped up except onto one seat. We opened the sensor casing up and found several mini sensors each pointing in a different direction. By blanking some of these off, we were able to protect our house from an intruder without the dog setting the alarm off.
I spent hours crawling around on my hands and knees whilst hubby discovered which sensors to blank off.
I wonder if this man was one of the guys interviewed by SY? I wonder if they came back in the daylight and deliberately broke the light after having experienced it coming on when Margaret came out.
I see absolutely no reason to disbelieve Margaret; she just got her front and back of the building muddled .... as so many of us did to begin with.
