Petition re Madeleine McCann on Prime Minister's website

[Mr Gray]

The mccann supporters as do the mccanns, make a lot of claims.

It does not make them true, as with 'abduction'.

it is SY who have said abduction

[Carana]

Blonk:

Quote:
"2.   The clearly political nature of the decision to set up Operation Grange. I know of no other case where a Prime Minister has had to personally order an investigation, whether on our soil or foreign soil. Sometimes a British police force will, with the active co-operation of a foreign government, allow British officers to conduct enquiries in their country. But in this case, the Home Secretary had already and over a substantial period of time (a year) refused the McCanns’ request for a ‘review’. It was clear that David Cameron had to force Theresa May’s hand.

End quote




I don't see how Cameron could have "ordered" it. Ultimately, it was up to the Met Commissioner to consider it, but Stephenson could have refused if he'd been satisfied that the scoping exercise revealed no major deficiencies, which was clearly not the case.

There does indeed appear to have been Home Office inertia for a while, but UK law enforcement had been sending anything of potential interest over to PT, and that was probably considered sufficient.

They may not have fully realised that there were question marks over how seriously any incoming information to PT was being checked out...

Not only was this a young missing British subject, but there were also sexual assaults on British girls in the same area and they deserve some form of closure as well.

[stephen25000]

Blonk:

Quote:
"2.   The clearly political nature of the decision to set up Operation Grange. I know of no other case where a Prime Minister has had to personally order an investigation, whether on our soil or foreign soil. Sometimes a British police force will, with the active co-operation of a foreign government, allow British officers to conduct enquiries in their country. But in this case, the Home Secretary had already and over a substantial period of time (a year) refused the McCanns’ request for a ‘review’. It was clear that David Cameron had to force Theresa May’s hand.

End quote




I don't see how Cameron could have "ordered" it. Ultimately, it was up to the Met Commissioner to consider it, but Stephenson could have refused if he'd been satisfied that the scoping exercise revealed no major deficiencies, which was clearly not the case.

There does indeed appear to have been Home Office inertia for a while, but UK law enforcement had been sending anything of potential interest over to PT, and that was probably considered sufficient.

They may not have fully realised that there were question marks over how seriously any incoming information to PT was being checked out...

Not only was this a young missing British subject, but there were also sexual assaults on British girls in the same area and they deserve some form of closure as well.

...and the assaults have no proven link to the mccann case.

[G-Unit]

G do you really believe that if any evidence emerged from the files during the investigation which cast serious doubt on an 'abuction' - then that information/evidence would be ignored because it didn't fit in with SY's remit?

What do you think SY would have done with such evidence if it existed?

How do you think they confirmed there was an abduction then? There's nothing in the files showing that an abduction took place. The Met speculated about burglars and smelly man but there was nothing in the files to suggest any of those people were in PdL on 3rd.

[Mr Gray]

Gerry Mccann lets slip.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz7hQetKpZk

oh dear...looks like you were wrong

[Mr Gray]

How do you think they confirmed there was an abduction then? There's nothing in the files showing that an abduction took place. The Met speculated about burglars and smelly man but there was nothing in the files to suggest any of those people were in PdL on 3rd.

no one has confirmed an abduction.......

[Carana]

Blonk
Quote:
3.   The fact that the decision to order a review was effected by a private citizen who lived near to the Prime Minister who was the CEO to (arguably) the world’s most influential media magnate. It is on record, not least during the proceedings of the Leveson enquiry, that it was Rebekah Brooks, one of whose newspapers was very profitably serialising Kate McCann’s book at the time, who twisted David Cameron’s arm into setting up the review. There were credible, sourced reports at the time that Brooks had threatened ‘a week of bad headlines about the Home Secretary’ to get her way. At Leveson she admitted only to ‘persuading’ Cameron. Rebekah and Charlie Brooks live barely 3.5 miles away from David and Samantha Cameron and attend each other’s parties and those of others in the ‘Chipping Norton’ set. Or as it is generally known in that neck of the woods: ‘The Chipping Snorton Set’. Moreover Brooks and Cameron used to go horse riding together"
End quote

Aside from the obvious interest in revenue for The Sun, perhaps she genuinely found a review a good idea. And aside from PR brownie points for Cameron, I expect he did as well.

[stephen25000]

How do you think they confirmed there was an abduction then? There's nothing in the files showing that an abduction took place. The Met speculated about burglars and smelly man but there was nothing in the files to suggest any of those people were in PdL on 3rd.

As we know, the 'abduction' is pure speculation.

[pathfinder73]

I asked about Operation Grange's remit (together with several other questions about Grange) on 12 August 2011, by way of a Freedom of Information Act request. The Metropolitan Police refused the request on various grounds. My application and their response can be seen here:

http://www.mccannfiles.com/id391.html

It was on 4 January 2012 that they first published details of their remit, and all of that is detailed on pamalam's site, here:
 
http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/press/57jan12/Metropolitan_04_01_2012.htm

That tells us that the remit was decided before 4 January 2012, but not exactly when. I do recall another Yard statement saying that the remit had been decided 'soon after Operation Grange was set up' and there was a reference elsewhere to a meeting of all the Yard's top officers to discuss this and other matters regarding Grange on a date in June 2011. I can't lay my hands on those references at the minute.

I hope that helps.

ETA - P.S.   With reference to my earlier comments that Operation Grange is essentially a political, not a police, operation, I would argue that the Prime Minister of the U.K. had already told Sir Paul Stephenson, the then Head of the Met Police, exactly what the remit of Operation Grange was to be. His spokesman was directly quoted on 12 May 2011 as saying that the purpose of establishing this review was to:

"HELP THE FAMILY" 

It follows from that that all the Senior Investigation Officer - DCS Hamish Campbell, the bungler of the Jill Dando murder investigation - had to do was to sit down and write out the Prime Minister's order into a form of words.

Which he did   

1) On 5 October 2011, the Met responds to a FOIA request concerning the terms of the case review. It states:

'High profile reviews, such as this one, are highly emotive and the manner in which they are conducted are usually kept in strict secrecy so that the tactics and lines of enquiry that are followed do not become public knowledge thereby rendering them useless.'

[Carana]

"4.   The unprecedented nature of a native police force and its government allowing a foreign police to conduct an investigation of its own purported inadequacy."   

The scoping exercise examined the evidence at hand - which may well have included deficiencies on both sides.

[Carana]

5.   The extreme unlikelihood that this foreign investigation by Grange could yield results any different from those achieved by the combined forces of the Portuguese and Leicestershire Police forces.

An active investigation is more likely to yield results than filing whatever did end up on Paiva's desk as "of no relevance to the investigation".

[Carana]

"6.   The appointment of Det Chief Supt Hamish Campbell as the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) in the case. The SIO sets the goals and parameters of an investigation. Det Chief Insp Redwood was merely the Investigating Officer (IO!) SIO & IO are technical terms used in all British police investigations. Redwood’s role was simply to carry out Campbell’s instructions. Campbell was a major contributor to the bungled investigation into the murder of Jill Dando, by arresting the wrong man: Barry Bulsara/George. He was the architect of sending an innocent man to jail for several years. As soon as I head that Campbell was the SIO, I asked myself for what possible honest reason he had been put in charge of Grange."

What dishonest reason are you suggesting?

[Carana]

7.   The effort and expense of producing an age-progressed picture of Madeleine ,aged 9 or 10. I did not see the investigative merit of that and it looked more like an effort in influencing public perception.

The images that the public would remember are of a 3 year-old. Age-progressed images are frequently commissioned when there is a chance that the child may still be alive. How else is someone supposed to recognise her if ever they came across her?

[Carana]

"8.   The BBC Crimewatch McCann Special - 1  The purported reconstruction of the events of the holiday and of 3rd May were a one-sided, selective presentation of the available facts. Again the effort appeared to be directed towards influencing public perception and not for investigative purposes "


Crimewatch is intended to jog memories and encourage people to come forward with potentially useful information.

[Carana]

9.   The BBC Crimewatch McCann Special - 2   I had great doubts as to whether any of the Smith family could realistically have drawn up, together with Henri Exton, the ex-Head of Covert Intelligence at MI5, any e-fits of a man they had (a) seen a whole year earlier (b) only for a few seconds at most (c) with his head down (d) and his face partially hidden by the child he was carrying (e) in the dark (f) with what they all admitted was ‘weak’ street lighting and (g) when on 26 May 2007 at Portimao Police station each of the three members of the family frankly stated that “we would not be able to recognise him if we saw him again”

10.   The BBC Crimewatch McCann Special – 3    Moreover, Grange issued two e-fits of two quite different-looking men, with differences such as the overall shape of the face, length of nose, length and style of hair, depth of chin etc. At best this seemed highly unudual. 



I half-agree with you as to how representative those e-fits may be. On the other hand, even if they are based on vague recollections, they may have been deemed better than nothing.

ETA - it's not clear who commissioned them.