A reminder.
There have been a number of official suspects or arguidos in this case including expat Robert Murat, Russian national Sergey Malinka and Maddie's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. None of them have come out of this smelling of roses for one reason or another.
Let me say firstly that it is by no means unusual for the parents of a missing child to attract suspicion since most child abduction cases do involve persons known to the child. In this case however there are other peripheral events which leave many questions still to be answered. Those events include the refusal by Kate McCann to answer the simplest questions when formally interviewed, the voluntary non participation by the parents and their friends in a reconstruction of the events on the night Maddie disappeared, the savage attack on certain Portuguese police officers and the detective who led the original investigation. Then there was the Oakley International debacle involving fraudster Kevin Halligen which saw a secret Report and e-fits withheld from the public. Add to this the murky business involving the Madeleine Fund and the Spanish private detective agency Metodo 3 and a certain pattern begins to develop.
The Archive Report issued back when the original enquiry was shelved for lack of evidence stated that the parents had "failed to demonstrate their non involvement" and the Portuguese Supreme Court has more recently been forced to make the unprecedented declaration that the parents have not been cleared.
The Madeleine Fund itself has attracted much criticism. Far from being the transparent Company it was initially set up to be to handle donations from the public, it has morphed into something else with accounts and payments shrouded in secrecy.
Are all these events interrelated or is there more to this than meets the eye?
I don't know about interrelated but they certainly aren't the norm in cases of claimed child abduction.
Your first point I agree with, none of the arguidos have come out of this saga smelling of roses. Both Murat and Malinka have had their private business splattered all over the national press in several countries. The allegations against them both aside from the Madeleine case have been very unsavoury.
Your second point concerning the apparent lack of cooperation is also valid to some extent. This seldom happens in real child abduction cases, the parents of a missing child are normally pro active and pro police. I personally struggle to comprehend why one of the McCanns wasn't at all times fully involved in searches and other police activities. The police usually have a problem keeping parents away from certain activities but no such difficulty in this case. Even when one of the parents did attend a briefing at police HQ the detective in charge commented upon his odd behavior.
The failure to answer simple questions is an odd one admittedly. That said, it is the right of any arguida to do so but I fail to see how that approach could in any way assist the police who were after all trying to find out what happened to her daughter. All very odd!
The private detectives sagas are very odd too. Employing one PI firm who turned out to be rogues is just bad luck but employing two is just unheard of. Most of us here know the background to Oakley International and Método 3 so there is no point in me going through it all again. Safe to say however that secret e-fits and secret reports are not conducive with full and frank disclosure.
The Portuguese Courts have made their thoughts on the case abundantly clear, unfortunately, none of it has brought us any closer to finding Madeleine McCann or bringing to justice anyone involved in her disappearance.
Taking all of the above into consideration one couldn't be faulted for wondering just what the hell was going on?
