UK Justice Forum 🇬🇧
Disappeared and Abducted Children and Young Adults => Madeleine McCann (3) disappeared from her parent's holiday apartment at Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, Portugal on 3 May 2007. No trace of her has ever been found. => Topic started by: sadie on April 23, 2013, 11:15:39 PM
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A number of posters have expressed the opinion that the PJ are innocent of torture
Being in the UK, I have limited knowledge, so in a limited way, I am showing that torture by the PJ is not uncommon in PT, especially in the Algarve region
TORTURE1
This document comes from HANSARD, the official records of The Houses of Parliament.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1992-06-09/Debate-20.html
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Mr. Michael Cook
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Boswell.]
12.23 am
Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point) : Rachel, a 9-year-old girl, was murdered by strangulation in a car on the Algarve in Portugal in November 1990. Michael Cook, a friend of Rachel's family, was convicted of the murder in February this year and sentenced to 19 years' imprisonment. He was tried by three local judges without a jury. The House will hear that the conviction is unsafe.
I must start with every possible word of sympathy for Rachel and her family. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) is here because of his concern for his constituent, the victim's mother.
There can be no greater evil than such a crime. I would not defend in any way a child murderer, but I will defend my constituent's right to a fair trial. My responsibility and my job tonight is to highlight the possibility that my constituent may be the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. Some say that Cook is innocent ; some say that the police investigation was inadequate. Some say that the trial verdict was so lacking supporting evidence as to be incredible. Some say that Cook has been tortured and mistreated. Those are not questions which the House can or should decide. In truth, I do not know whether Cook is innocent or guilty. What I do know is that many questions are raised by the case which have the most serious implications, not only for Michael Cook, but for all British subjects travelling abroad.
Let us review some of the evidence. There was, understandably, immense local pressure to clear up this horrible crime. An unsolved child murder would frighten away tourists. An elderly Portuguese gardener said that he saw the murderer and the murder car. He said that the car was red with foreign plates. Cook had such a car. It was alleged that Cook's car tyre marks were found where the body was discovered, and on that prime tyre mark evidence Cook was arrested. It was claimed by the police that Cook had a child-molesting record and that he had confessed to the crime : they had their man. The public furore and the subsequent relief at Cook's arrest were surpassed only by the total outrage against him.
Let us examine the initial key facts. After nine months in gaol, Cook got two good lawyers and it was quickly discovered that the prime--indeed the only--hard evidence linking Cook to the murder was bogus. The tyre marks were of an entirely different type from those of Cook's car. It is also claimed that Cook's car does not have the ground clearance needed for the area where Rachel was found. Similarly, no confession was ever presented at the trial. It had been claimed by police that two officers heard the confession. One remembered it clearly ; the second denied all recollection of it. One would not expect to forget such a thing easily.
Cook appeared in court, with black eyes and a missing tooth, and he was deeply bruised. It is claimed that Cook was hung from an upstairs window by his feet, that his feet were beaten until he could not stand, that he was tied to a chair and beaten, that he was deprived of sleep, and that a revolver was forced into his mouth and the trigger pulled in a mock execution. Cook's lawyers were said to be pushing for the release of a television video report which
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... Cook's lawyers were said to be pushing for the release of a television video report which
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allegedly showed police beating Cook.
Those lawyers were involved in a tragic accident involving a front tyre blow-out which, incidentally, it is claimed has never been properly investigated by the police. In that untimely accident, Dr. da Silva was killed and Dr. Coelho was severely injured.
What of the final piece of the early evidence--Cook's record as a child molester? It too is quite bogus. At the trial, the police tried to rescue some credibility on the point. An officer said that Cook had been seen abusing a child a few weeks before Rachel's murder. One might wonder why that was not mentioned at the time. Nevertheless, the judge asked the officer how he knew that. The officer replied that someone, unnamed, had told him. The judge accepted that so-called "evidence" as clear and unequivocal. I must inform the House that I know of no evidence that Cook has ever posed any threat to children.
I do know of evidence suggesting that Cook is safe and trustworthy with children. I am not aware of any conspiracy and I make no allegations. However, it must be said that Cook was a good target to be "fitted up". He has a minor criminal record and he was working unregistered on the Algarve in the motor trade. Indeed, he may have hung himself as his initial account to the police of his movements could have been inconsistent because he thought that he was being questioned about a petty crime.
Let me return to the old gardener--there is always an old gardener in such tales. He changed his story at least twice ; his memory, it seems, was greatly assisted by the police. The car was indeed red and foreign, he said ; but so was Rachel's stepfather's car, and many others in the area. He also saw Cook talking to Rachel. Cook was, he said, wearing sunglasses, although it would have been almost dark at the time.
The gardener had no difficulty, however, in picking out Cook from an identification parade--at least, not after the police had specifically pointed Cook out to him, asking, "Is that the man?" Not that that was necessary ; Cook was a white, 5-ft-tall, slightly built Englishman, while the rest of the parade consisted of burly, dark, Portuguese policemen who were obviously of Mediterranean origin. Hon. Members may be horrified to learn that, much earlier than that parade--indeed, the day after the body was found--Cook was shown to the gardener by the local police, and the gardener said that Cook was not the man whom he had seen on the fateful day in question. He changed his story. Clearly, the police case needed boosting, so the most incredible thing happened : a reconstruction of the crime was forced on Cook.
The police said that, in the reconstruction, Cook had shown them the exact positions in which they had found Rachel's school bag and shoes. They said that those items had been thrown by Cook from a fast-moving car over many kilometres on a country road down which he can seldom have been before, some weeks after the alleged event. Even the police blushed when they told that one in court.
Let me now review the harrowing scene of the crime. Again, I sincerely apologise to the victim's family, but this has to be done. A pathologist stated that Rachel struggled furiously for her life in the front passenger seat of a car ; it
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A number of posters have expressed the opinion that the PJ are innocent of torture
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No, a court decided the pj officers, accused by a woman convicted of murder or accessory to it, dont know,never followed thecase closely, who lost ALL appeals, were innocent
She has been convicted for perjury and her sentence for murder added to
All the evidence pointed to her getting a beating off her inmates, doesnt surprise me and dont blame them either
Who wouldnt want to beat up a child murderer
ETA Oh so sorry you are bringing up a whole countrys bad police history onto a single case here, sorry about that, thought you were talking about the Cipriano case or the Madeleine case, oops, do carry on
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Ah that person has something in common with Amaral then
he too is a convicted perjurer
"The offense of willfully telling an untruth in a court after having taken an oath or affirmation".
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A pathologist stated that Rachel struggled furiously for her life in the front passenger seat of a car ; it
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took four to eight minutes to kill her by strangulation. Rachel naturally fought hard, and had the blood of her murderer under her fingernails.
No sophisticated DNA or type matching of the samples was ever presented to court. No evidence was ever presented even to show the simple blood group of the murderer. Such basic blood-group evidence could not have proved that Cook was the murderer, but it could most assuredly have proved his innocence. Hon. Members may feel very uncomfortable about the fact that that evidence was lost, and we should ask why it was lost--or, worse, why it was not used. What, then, of the other forensic evidence? We can all imagine the horrific struggle--that frantic four or eight minutes. Surely the car would exhibit many clues ; law experts feel that that must be so. Incredibly, however, not a single link was found between Cook's car and Rachel, or her clothes. The Sunday Times stated :
"Not a single hair, fibre, bloodstain or sign of damage was found in Cook's car. And Police did not find it unusual that Cook had not cleaned the entire car in an effort to erase prints ... When the body was found, no forensic search was made of the area and no tests were carried out on a bloodstain seen under a fingernail. The body was cremated within days and without extensive forensic examination."
Therefore, the defence was denied the possibility of conducting the necessary independent tests. Is not that beyond belief?
Let me now turn to the pathologist's evidence, starting with the astonishing point that the report was tampered with. It has lost--for ever, it seems--its important front page, which gave, among other information, the time of death. The pathologist, apparently, is now unavailable.
The Sunday Times reported :
"Such post mortem work that was done was minimal".
However, a pathologist hired by the defence who examined Rachel's organs said that she might have been killed 24 or 30 hours before her body was discovered, which apparently indicates that she may have been held alive by her murderer for up to two days. She was discovered four days after she disappeared. Cook was first in police hands the day after she disappeared.
That brings us to the alibi evidence and suggests that Cook had the best possible alibi--he was in very close contact with or in the custody of the police, but the judges dismissed that, the pathologist's evidence. Moreover, there was the condition of Rachel and her clothes when found. They were clean and dry. That is consistent with the defence pathologist's findings. The weather had been dry the day Rachel was found, but the previous days had been wet, thus suggesting that Rachel had been dumped only the day she was found.
That evidence was also disallowed by the judges. They chose, as they can under Portuguese law, to refuse to hear some evidence. In a trivial case, that may have been justified, but, in the circumstances, hon. Members may feel that that was an extraordinary piece of selectivity. What is even more remarkable, though, is that the person who found Rachel's body was never called to give evidence, and therefore his evidence was denied to the defence.
Additional alibi evidence comes from Cook's workmates, who saw him a maximum of 10 minutes after he was said to be seen by the man on the horse at the place of the body. The times were precise and checked, but the distance of the two sightings put them a minimum of 12 minutes
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Ah that person has something in common with Amaral then
he too is a convicted perjurer
"The offense of willfully telling an untruth in a court after having taken an oath or affirmation".
Perjury, even if true, which it wasnt, miles different from MURDERING YOUR OWN CHILD...disgusting at best for you to even compare, my ignore a plank metre must be broke, off to reset it
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Ah that person has something in common with Amaral then
he too is a convicted perjurer
"The offense of willfully telling an untruth in a court after having taken an oath or affirmation".
Perjury, even if true, which it wasnt, miles different from MURDERING YOUR OWN CHILD...disgusting at best for you to even compare, my ignore a plank metre must be broke, off to reset it
Justice is not a 'pick and mix' stall - if you raise perjury - I'll do the same
Whether other deeds are relevant is not the issue
The subject is perjury - not - let's say - swindling your brother out of money, being p*ssed in charge of a case of a disappeared child or threatening to kill peeps you don't like
Seperate issues - not to be confused with one another
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Additional alibi evidence comes from Cook's workmates, who saw him a maximum of 10 minutes after he was said to be seen by the man on the horse at the place of the body. The times were precise and checked, but the distance of the two sightings put them a minimum of 12 minutes
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apart, with no allowance for any other activity at all. That would have been impossible to achieve. That evidence was also rejected.
According to the pathologist, Rachel was strangled with a nylon rope. A nylon rope, a jumper matching the one Rachel was wearing and a blanket which was covered with pine needles, as was Rachel's body, were all seen in a car, but not Cook's car. They were seen in Rachel's stepfather's red foreign car. The police did not investigate or use that evidence.
The stepfather certainly had a violent nature at times. Rachel's mother was said by a neighbour sometimes to flee to her home for sanctuary with the neigbour and to stay there with her overnight out of fear of her stepfather's violence. Several people say that they saw scratch marks on the side of the stepfather's face and his arm the day after Rachel disappeared.
Some have pointed a finger at the stepfather, but the House cannot and must not assume anything--that would be quite wrong. In a further twist, the stepfather died tragically precisely one year to the day after Rachel was killed, the third death in this story. Therefore, his confession cannot be tested. I raise those points not to incriminate in any way Rachel's stepfather but only to illustrate, as is my clear duty, the late evening shadow of doubt which is cast over the conviction of my constituent.
I now refer briefly to the trial and verdict. We have seen that there was no jury and that the three judges were local. They were inexperienced in trying such an unusual case. In Portugal, judges are able to dictate entirely what evidence they will admit and what they will refuse even to hear. With so much evidence lost, destroyed or refused by the judges, Cook's trial was fatally flawed.
The basis of the judges' verdict was made clear in their summing-up. There was a total lack of hard forensic evidence, but sadly there was no lack of hearsay. For instance, members of the Portuguese Institute of Fingerprints told the court the judges said "with conviction", that Cook's way of life and his friendship with Rachel's family indicated that he was the murderer. Sadly, those fingerprints experts produced no fingerprint evidence.[/u] [/b]
The judges implied that no motive whatsoever was found, and Cook was not accused of any particular motive. There was no sexual interference of any kind with Rachel. In Portuguese law, first-degree murder requires a motive and premeditation, I understand. They seemed curiously absent. The judges said nothing of substance that I can find in the translation of their summary, except that, as Cook knew the family, he must be the murderer.
I turn, briefly, to the appeal. The hearing may not take place until June 1993. That delay, would be intolerable. The appeal cannot question the evidence produced at the trial. That evidence, such as it is, with all its flaws, is considered to be irrefutable. For instance, the police evidence that Cook was a child molester cannot be questioned. Yet we know that it should be.
In the appeal lawyers may question only the admissibility of the evidence under Portuguese law. That raises yet a further grave misgiving because incredibly Cook and his lawyers are not allowed to attend the appeal. Those in the House who believe that justice should be seen to be done may be staggered by that revelation. As my predecessor Sir Bernard Braine wrote :
"There is little likelihood that even by the Appeal justice will be done".
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Presumably the matter can be argued in the European Court later. Meanwhile, I have three objectives for the debate. First, I wish to bring pressure on the Portuguese authorities about the possible miscarriage of justice and to allow the earliest possible appeal consistent with a fair and safe hearing. Secondly, I wish to prevent any torture or mistreatment of Cook and to signal to all nations that human rights must be upheld. Thirdly, I wish to thank the Foreign Office for its help and advice so far, which has been professional and appropriate--no blame can lie with it--and I ask the Minister to provide a monthly written report from the British consular staff on Cook's physical and mental condition. In addition to those three things, I seek a general review of the help which consular staff give to British citizens arrested abroad.
In summary, there are substantial grounds to believe that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. First, the conduct of the police investigation is in question. Secondly, the conduct of the trial and the basis of the verdict are in question. Thirdly, I place full trust in the Portuguese justice system to ensure that the appeal is fair. Fourthly, there are grounds to question the physical and mental treatment of Cook. Fifthly, the European Court and the European human rights body may eventually need to intervene if the appeal cannot answer the many questions raised. But I trust that that will not be necessary.
I understand that Cook is considering starting a hunger strike. That would hamper my efforts and I most strongly urge him not to do so, particularly in his poor physical condition. We are told that he is prematurely grey. His bodyweight is down to seven stones. He is skeletal. He has three ulcers. His remaining teeth are rotted. He is withdrawn and paranoid. As a child murderer he has suffered many attacks in prison. He bears two knife scars and many burns scars to prove it. He is alone in a foreign gaol, unable to speak the language. He needs our help. But I stress again that we cannot judge the case from our position here.
I sincerely thank the Minister for his advice and support so far, which is also much appreciated by the family. All British citizens must know that, when their back is against the wall and all seems lost and they feel that the world has deserted them, there is a place--this honourable House--where their basic human rights will be upheld and that there are men and women who will fight for their rights, including their right to a fair trial. My fight does not end here tonight. Here, indeed, it begins.
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A number of posters have expressed the opinion that the PJ are innocent of torture
Being in the UK, I have limited knowledge, so in a limited way, I am showing that torture by the PJ is not uncommon in PT, especially in the Algarve region
TORTURE1
This document comes from HANSARD, the official records of The Houses of Parliament.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1992-06-09/Debate-20.html
Column 282
Mr. Michael Cook
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Boswell.]
12.23 am
Dr. Robert Spink (Castle Point) : Rachel, a 9-year-old girl, was murdered by strangulation in a car on the Algarve in Portugal in November 1990. Michael Cook, a friend of Rachel's family, was convicted of the murder in February this year and sentenced to 19 years' imprisonment. He was tried by three local judges without a jury. The House will hear that the conviction is unsafe.
I must start with every possible word of sympathy for Rachel and her family. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall) is here because of his concern for his constituent, the victim's mother.
There can be no greater evil than such a crime. I would not defend in any way a child murderer, but I will defend my constituent's right to a fair trial. My responsibility and my job tonight is to highlight the possibility that my constituent may be the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice. Some say that Cook is innocent ; some say that the police investigation was inadequate. Some say that the trial verdict was so lacking supporting evidence as to be incredible. Some say that Cook has been tortured and mistreated. Those are not questions which the House can or should decide. In truth, I do not know whether Cook is innocent or guilty. What I do know is that many questions are raised by the case which have the most serious implications, not only for Michael Cook, but for all British subjects travelling abroad.
Let us review some of the evidence. There was, understandably, immense local pressure to clear up this horrible crime. An unsolved child murder would frighten away tourists. An elderly Portuguese gardener said that he saw the murderer and the murder car. He said that the car was red with foreign plates. Cook had such a car. It was alleged that Cook's car tyre marks were found where the body was discovered, and on that prime tyre mark evidence Cook was arrested. It was claimed by the police that Cook had a child-molesting record and that he had confessed to the crime : they had their man. The public furore and the subsequent relief at Cook's arrest were surpassed only by the total outrage against him.
Let us examine the initial key facts. After nine months in gaol, Cook got two good lawyers and it was quickly discovered that the prime--indeed the only--hard evidence linking Cook to the murder was bogus. The tyre marks were of an entirely different type from those of Cook's car. It is also claimed that Cook's car does not have the ground clearance needed for the area where Rachel was found. Similarly, no confession was ever presented at the trial. It had been claimed by police that two officers heard the confession. One remembered it clearly ; the second denied all recollection of it. One would not expect to forget such a thing easily.
Cook appeared in court, with black eyes and a missing tooth, and he was deeply bruised. It is claimed that Cook was hung from an upstairs window by his feet, that his feet were beaten until he could not stand, that he was tied to a chair and beaten, that he was deprived of sleep, and that a revolver was forced into his mouth and the trigger pulled in a mock execution. Cook's lawyers were said to be pushing for the release of a television video report which
Sadie, what do you hope to reveal, from the UK and without PJ files ?
Why don't you first try to analyse SY eventual "miscarriages" ?
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12.43 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd) : The House will be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) for bringing this important case to its attention. I note the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Sir M. Marshall), who represents his constituent, the mother of Rachel Charles. I should like to outline the action taken by Her Majesty's Government on behalf of Michael Cook and his family since his arrest. On 5 December 1990 the British consulate in Portimao was informed that Michael Cook had been arrested the previous day for the murder of Rachel Charles. The consulate was told that he had confessed and would be taken before a judge on6 December to be formally charged. The Portimao consul visited him on 6 December. On that occasion he said that
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he was being well treated and had no complaints. A Portuguese police officer was present throughout that meeting.
On 10 December the Portimao consul had a private meeting with Michael Cook. On that occasion Mr. Cook said that he had been beaten twice : once when detained for questioning on 22 November and subsequently after his arrest on 4 December. He said that he had confessed under duress. He claimed to have been beaten on the chest and feet ; this, he said, explained why there were no signs of ill treatment.
On the following day, at the consul's insistence, Michael Cook was asked by the prison staff whether he wished to see a doctor so that a formal complaint about his mistreatment could be made. He declined to do so. Also on 11 December the British consul in Lisbon told Mr. Cook's Portuguese lawyer that the embassy would make a formal complaint if Mr. Cook wished. The offer was not taken up either by the lawyer or by Mr. Cook during subsequent visits by the Portimao consul. Thus, no medical examination to substantiate the allegations or otherwise took place.
From 11 December 1990 to 30 January 1992 when his trial began, Michael Cook was visited seven more times by consular officials. He complained once, in February 1991, of having been threatened verbally by other inmates, but said that the threats had ceased. Twice he complained of suffering from mental stress and three times from ulcer problems. The British consul on those occasions sought and received assurances from the prison governor that Mr. Cook would receive the necessary treatment.
The consuls from Lisbon and Portimao attended the first day of Michael Cook's trial, and the Portimao consul attended the last day, 7 February 1992.
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Michael Cook's Trial was as credible as The Cipriano Trial. Both without a scrap of anything like logical or reasonable evidence.
Thanks for starting this, Sadie.
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On 19 February Michael Cook's brother, Colin Cook, rang the embassy in Lisbon to say that he had heard that Michael Cook had been stabbed in prison in Faro. The embassy immediately made inquiries. It was assured that Michael Cook had not been stabbed, although he had been involved in an argument over cigarettes with another prisoner. The following day the vice- consul from Lisbon visited Mr. Cook. Although physically all right, he was understandably extremely upset over the trial verdict. The prison governor gave assurances for Mr. Cook's safety. On 4 March 1992, Michael Cook was transferred to Coimbra high security prison, about 110 miles north of Lisbon. During that month, the consul and vice-consul drew the attention of officials at the Portuguese Ministry ofForeign Affairs to the great degree of British ministerial, official and public concern about Michael Cook's case. On 8 March The Sunday Times published an article reporting that Mr. Cook had been ill treated at the hands of other prisoners. The pro-consul in Lisbon looked into those allegations without delay. He contacted the prison governor on 10 March to register the embassy's concern for Michael Cook's safety and welfare. He was assured that there was no evidence of ill -treatment. Later that day, the vice-consul spoke to Mr. Cook by telephone. Mr. Cook said that one inmate--not a cellmate--had uttered a verbal threat, but that he had not been physically attacked. He mentioned that he was suffering from a stomach ulcer and had dental problems. In
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response to this, the vice-consul said that the embassy would write to the prison governor about these problems. A letter was sent on 13 March.
On 6 April Coimbra prison confirmed to the embassy that Michael Cook had been given a full-time job in the prison car paint workshop. It also confirmed that he had seen a doctor about his ulcer and had been put on a special diet. He had also seen a dentist.
On 16 April, the consul visited Michael Cook for two hours in a private room. Mr. Cook confirmed that he had gained some weight as a result of his special diet, and did not wish to have any matter raised with the prison authorities.
Michael Cook recently told his parents that he had been taken to see a psychiatrist. He was under the impression that the prison was trying to have him committed to a mental home, which would make it even more difficult for him to prove his innocence. Coimbra prison has told the consul that Michael Cook did not in fact see a psychiatrist. He was taken to see a specialist about his stomach ulcer. Unfortunately, it appears that the prison mistakenly translated "specialist" for "psychiatrist" when talking to Mr. Cook. The consul will visit Mr. Cook again on19 June.
I have described the full support given by the consuls in Portimao and Lisbon. Prisoners Abroad, an admirable organisation run by our former colleague in the House, Keith Best, has been in regular contact with Michael Cook and is giving him full support. I know that Michael Cook, his family and others believe that there has been a miscarriage of justice. I can well understand their concern, but, whatever we may think, it would be wrong for me to express an opinion on the conduct of the trial while an appeal is pending. If the lawyers believe that the case has not been dealt with in accordance with Portuguese law, it is their responsibility to take appropriate steps. Portuguese law provides for this and, indeed, the lawyers have submitted an appeal on Michael Cook's behalf. They have told the British embassy that the Portuguese supreme court has accepted the appeal and that, in their view, the appeal process is proceeding satisfactorily.
On 19 February Colin Cook complained to the British consul in Lisbon that the trial violated article 6 of the European convention on the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. On examination, he agreed that the European convention can be brought into play only when all local remedies have been exhausted. We are keeping in close touch with Mr. Cook's lawyers and the Portuguese authorities. We are asking them to do what they can to ensure that Michael Cook's appeal is heard by the supreme court with the minimum delay. Our ambassador in Lisbon wrote to the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 3 June to press this point, and I will be in touch with my hon. Friend as soon as I have a reply.
I fully appreciate my hon. Friend's concern about this case, but I hope that he will understand from what I have said that we cannot intervene until the Portuguese legal process has taken its course. Until then we shall, through our consular officials, continue to visit Mr. Cook regularly and to offer him and his family all the support that we properly can. I shall continue to keep my hon. Friend fully informed
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My apologies for this being so long, but I thouight that you should read the lot
Have tried to break it up using colour. Sorry if I have temporarily blinded you @)(++(*
Now is this 'is' ... or is this 'aint' torture, corruption and lies by the PT PJ?
And does tghis 'show' or does this 'not show' Transparent Justice by the PT courts?
Was this trial fair?
Was the evidence sound?
Were the forensics thorough?
Oh there are so many questions
,Over to you guys
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
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Couldn't agree more Eleanor 8((()*/
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
True
They still love Salazar's police state in PT to this day
slippery cop shop stairs - gotta love 'em
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
Absolutely ridiculous suggestion that the pj were waitingto beat up kate and gerry mccann LOOOOOL!!!!! Pathetic
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
True
They still love Salazar's police state in PT to this day
slippery cop shop stairs - gotta love 'em
slippery cop shop stairs - gotta love 'em 8((()*/ @)(++(*
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Must just be me then ... I couldn't care less about the welfare of child murderers
There was a story recently about Ian Huntley ( who murdered Holly and Jessica in Sonham, although he still denies it ) saying he was frequently being beaten up in prison, and even had a biro shoved in his eye
Will I lose sleep over it ? ... not a wink
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Must just be me then ... I couldn't care less about the welfare of child murderers
There was a story recently about Ian Huntley ( who murdered Holly and Jessica in Sonham, although he still denies it ) saying he was frequently being beaten up in prison, and even had a biro shoved in his eye
Will I lose sleep over it ? ... not a wink
8((()*/
thats why that chiild murderess that some on here love was beaten up in prison, not rocket science unless youre thick
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I doubt there will be any more people falling down Police Station Stairs, especially not in Portimao. In fact, anyone in custody can rely on assistance from The PJ to make sure they don't. No one will believe them even if it's true. Oh, the irony if that should ever happen.
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So if you are framed by the PJ on a missing child case or murder, and taken thru the PT Courts who listen to tortured out evidence, but no real evidence ...
.... and you end up framed in jail, it's Ok if others beat you up?
Salazar speaking from your writing. Fascism
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So if you are framed by the PJ on a missing child case or murder, and taken thru the PT Courts who listen to tortured out evidence, but no real evidence ...
.... and you end up framed in jail, it's Ok if others beat you up?
Salazar speaking from your writing. Fascism
take a chill pill and the try and find proof for your sensationalism
leonora cipriano was found GUILTY and ALL her appeals rejected the last one only a year or so ago, are you suggestong portugal is under a fascists regime still? Because they jailed a mother and her brother for murder? But you prefer to think its a missing child case? because it suits your agenda? give over
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
Absolutely ridiculous suggestion that the pj were waitingto beat up kate and gerry mccann LOOOOOL!!!!! Pathetic
True. The PJ tend to stick to beating up uneducated peasants.
I wouldn't advise you to go there on holiday.
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
Absolutely ridiculous suggestion that the pj were waitingto beat up kate and gerry mccann LOOOOOL!!!!! Pathetic
True. The PJ tend to stick to beating up uneducated peasants.
I wouldn't advise you to go there on holiday.
Well i guess educated doctors thendidnt have to worry, so much for thebritish consul running in to prevent torture lol, sigh
Your problem is there is no evidence the police beat that wretched woman up over and above her inmates
And what is the purpose of this thread if torture was not used n the mccanns! In any way shape or form and never was going to be, ever?
Looking forward to torture no 2 thread 3 4 5 etc
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Had Kate answered those questions, the PJ almost certainly would have found some way for fitted her up, same as they fitted Michael Cook up, and Leonor and Joao ... and Victor-whatever-his name is(the railway worker).
Once she was charged, seems they would have set about putting out disinformation, propaganda, salacious stuff. Stuff to make the PT people angry with her. Easier to falsely charge someone if the peoples of the Country have taken on board the PJ propaganda and on the basis of it, developed a hatred of the person falsely charged
(also good stuff for sensational books = money making)
Then, so long as the public eye was off them, likely the torture would have started, physical or psychological.
The history is there Redblossom. It's on record; been done before several times that I know of .... and I aint even in PT
Tbh, you and Icabod are talking the talk of the bully and the lout
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Had Kate answered those questions, the PJ almost certainly would have found some way for fitted her up, same as they fitted Michael Cook up, and Leonor and Joao ... and Victor-whatever-his name is(the railway worker).
Once she was charged, seems they would have set about putting out disinformation, propaganda, salacious stuff. Stuff to make the PT people angry with her. Easier to falsely charge someone if the peoples of the Country have taken on board the PJ propaganda and on the basis of it, developed a hatred of the person falsely charged
(also good stuff for sensational books = money making)
Then, so long as the public eye was off them, likely the torture would have started, physical or psychological.
The history is there Redblossom. It's on record; been done before several times that I know of .... and I aint even in PT
Tbh, you and Icabod are talking the talk of the bully and the lout
You do realise you will have PROVE that Leobora Cipriano was fitted up dont you and give the evidence..
She confessed in the presence her lawyer and he didnt say it was beaten out of her
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
Absolutely ridiculous suggestion that the pj were waitingto beat up kate and gerry mccann LOOOOOL!!!!! Pathetic
True. The PJ tend to stick to beating up uneducated peasants.
I wouldn't advise you to go there on holiday.
Well i guess educated doctors thendidnt have to worry, so much for thebritish consul running in to prevent torture lol, sigh
Your problem is there is no evidence the police beat that wretched woman up over and above her inmates
And what is the purpose of this thread if torture was not used n the mccanns! In any way shape or form and never was going to be, ever?
So perhaps you can tell me why Amaral wrote and signed a report saying that she had injured herself falling down the stairs if this never happened?
And then went to Court and said the same thing. Something not quite right there. And it's still perjury.
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
Absolutely ridiculous suggestion that the pj were waitingto beat up kate and gerry mccann LOOOOOL!!!!! Pathetic
True. The PJ tend to stick to beating up uneducated peasants.
I wouldn't advise you to go there on holiday.
Well i guess educated doctors thendidnt have to worry, so much for thebritish consul running in to prevent torture lol, sigh
Your problem is there is no evidence the police beat that wretched woman up over and above her inmates
And what is the purpose of this thread if torture was not used n the mccanns! In any way shape or form and never was going to be, ever?
So perhaps you can tell me why Amaral wrote and signed a report saying that she had injured herself falling down the stairs if this never happened?
And then went to Court and said the same thing. Something not quite right there. And it's still perjury.
dont have the details so cant say anything, all mostly hearsay, feel free to post all correct details court hearings and judgements
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Must just be me then ... I couldn't care less about the welfare of child murderers
There was a story recently about Ian Huntley ( who murdered Holly and Jessica in Sonham, although he still denies it ) saying he was frequently being beaten up in prison, and even had a biro shoved in his eye
Will I lose sleep over it ? ... not a wink
Not a christian then? No moral compass then? No empathy then? Not a pleasant human being then.
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An interesting article by Nick Davies with some of the background about where this happened.
http://www.nickdavies.net/1993/08/01/kidnap-murder-and-justice-in-the-algarve/
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An interesting article by Nick Davies with some of the background about where this happened.
http://www.nickdavies.net/1993/08/01/kidnap-murder-and-justice-in-the-algarve/
Thank you Carana ... interesting article:
Nick Davies. Kidnap, murder and justice in the AlgarveThe Guardian
Published August 1993 No comments... »
Rachel Charles was nine years old when she went missing one warm November day in 1990 as she walked home after school, and when her body was found four days later, tucked under a pine tree a couple of miles along the coast, local people who had never even known her were terrified by the needless brutality of it all. It was a relief to almost everyone when the police arrested Michael Cook, then aged 38, and explained how he had abducted her and tried to have sex with her and then strangled her in his car when she started to fight him off. Cook was convicted of murder and sent to prison for 19 years.
It was on, the face of it, a classically simple piece of crime and detection. Yet nearly three years after Rachel’s death, the case has grown into the most complex of mysteries, riddled with speculation and conspiracy, ringed by allegations of corruption and big-time crime, infested with lies. It is a mystery whose strange and unexpected solution is, even now, only partially clear.
To begin to unravel this story, you have first to understand the place where it all happened – Vale Navio. Twenty years ago, it was 82 acres of scrubland and bleached grass perched over the sea on the Algarve coast of Portugal, nowhere special to anyone except the local peasant farmers who grazed their goats there. Now, Vale Navio is the biggest timeshare complex in Europe – villas, apartments, roads, shops, pools, bars – and in that short time, it has earned more than £30 million for its developers. Very big money – very big trouble.
At various points in its history, powerful Portuguese gangsters have moved in behind the respectable businessmen who were running the place and simply gutted it of cash with the result that most of the tourists who bought shares in Vale Navio now find they own nothing: their villas belong to the bank or else they were never even built. British gangsters smelled the money, too. A group of them arrived from Spain in the late 1980s and, until recently, they were taking £1,000 a week off the managers on the promise of not breaking the legs of their timeshare salesmen.
Drug deals, gun shots, protection rackets, fraud, corruption, theft and murder, too – Vale Navio has seen it all. In June this year, a retired teacher from Luton, Tony Madden, missed death by about 12 centimeters when someone fired two steel balls at him as he was driving out of the complex one night. He had gone there to organise a meeting of timeshare owners who wanted to find out the truth about who ripped them off. Madden was hardly surprised to be attacked. In March, a Manchester businessman named Brian Morgan had gone down to Vale Navio with the same idea and someone had opened fire on him in his villa. Madden went to the police in Albufeira and showed them the steel ball embedded in the door frame of his car, but the police just shrugged and smiled.
The trouble goes beyond Vale Navio. When tourism opened the gate to the Algarve, crime slipped in behind it. The province now rivals Amsterdam as the drugs gateway to Europe: cocaine from the old Portuguese colonies in central America; heroin from the protectorate in Macau; hashish from across the water in Morocco. There’s a new boom in Euro scams, creaming off illicit fortunes from the £10 million a day which the EEC is pumping into Portugal. A cash business like tourism is ideal for money-laundering, and the Algarve is awash with black money. There is still plenty of peace and sunshine, but it is riviera style masking ghetto culture, the Costa Chicago. Even the Sicilian Mafia have turned up. And Mick Cook walked into this.
Mick Cook is what they used to call a wide boy. He is a pint-sized Cockney, raised in Essex, with a teenage history of petty theft and punch-ups, a ducker and a diver, a strictly cash-only man, born to fiddle. If he buys a car, he fiddles the paperwork. If he makes a profit, he fiddles the tax. If he tells you it’s raining, it’s because he’s selling umbrellas. His family are law-abiding, hard-working people and Mick had a good trade as a car-sprayer and panel-beater but he always had one eye on the wrong side of the law, where the deals were. Still, for all that, he was a small-time player, no great intelligence, no big front, no gun and no chance at all of surviving with the big boys who run crime in the Algarve.
Mick Cook arrived in Vale Navio in the Spring of 1989 with his wife, a suitcase containing £63,000 in cash, and a string of bad debts behind him in Essex. He settled down fast, bought himself a flash red Triumph TR7 (never registered it), started panel-beating at a local garage (paid the “Porkies”, as he called them, to do half the work for him), began running Safari tours on the side (never got a licence) and spent long hours in a suntan and swimming shorts with the other Vale Navio Brits in the Nag’s Head bar (known as the Wonkey Donkey). That summer, his marriage broke up and he moved out of Vale Navio to a flat in Albufeira.
As far as the other Brits knew, that was more or less all there was to Mick Cook right up to the time that Rachel went missing sometime before 5.00 in the afternoon on Monday, November 19 1990. She was on the bus that brought all the Vale Navio children back from the international school XX miles eastwards along the coast at Vilamoura. Some of the other mothers who were waiting for the bus in front of the reception centre noticed her holding hands with a little girl called Jessica, then heading off on her own across the road, stopping to pat a couple of dogs that were barking at a villa gate, and finally walking round the corner with her bright pink schoolbag on her back. They never saw her again.
*
It was a while before her mother, Carol, raised the alarm. The local uniformed police, the GNR, were not too interested and so, overnight, about 30 of the Vale Navio Brits organised their own search, made several hundred photocopies of a poster with Rachel’s picture and started distributing it around the area. The next morning, Tuesday, a Vale Navio gardener came forward and said he had been working on a flower bed just around the corner where Rachel had walked when she left the bus and he had seen her getting into a red car with foreign number plates. He knew Rachel well and he was sure it was her; in his mind, he could still see her wriggling her pink bag off her shoulders and putting it on her lap, and he noticed, too, how she got into the wrong side of the car – a British car.
That afternoon, at 1.30, there was a ransom call: a man with an English accent phoned the Vale Navio sales office and demanded £300,000 for Rachel’s safe return. Now the police started to be more interested and the local detective force, the Policia Judiciaria, were called in. They started talking to the owners of red cars with foreign plates, such as Mick Cook’s flash TR7. Cook told them he had left work once during Monday afternoon to go to a drug store to buy a coloured tape for the side of a car he was working on but he said he didn’t remember being in Vale Navio at all that day.
By Wednesday, the search for the missing girl had made it to the local radio news. That afternoon, her shoes and pink schoolbag were found in some woods ten minutes drive away from the scene of her abduction. That evening, a group of Vale Navio Brits trawled the bars of Albufeira appealing for help and the next morning, Thursday, more than 300 tourists turned out to help. At 11.30, they saw her, not far from where her bag had been found, lying on her back under a thin blanket of pine needles, fully clothed, with purple rope marks on her neck.
By this time, the police had checked the stories of the car owners they had talked to – and suddenly Mick Cook was on his way up the scaffold. His car was not properly registered; no one at the drug store could remember his being there on Monday afternoon; and, worse than that, several people disputed his claim that he hadn’t been to Vale Navio that day and insisted that he had been parked near the reception centre just as Rachel and the other children were climbing off their bus. On Thursday afternoon, the police arrested Mick Cook and questioned him for 12 hours. They let him go but they let him know, too, that he was their prime suspect.
Over the next ten days, the police pursued their case. They found tyre tracks near the body and compared them to the TR7. They found a local riding instructor who said that on Monday afternoon he had been up near the area where Rachel’s body was later found and he had seen a man in sunglasses with a red car and the man could have been Mick. The police seized Mick’s car and found a knife, some hair and a coil of rope, which they sent off to their scientists. They spoke to Rachel’s mother, Carol, who said Mick was one of the very few people whose car Rachel would have agreed to get into. They spoke to her stepfather, Ray, who said he was sure Mick was capable of the crime and added that he had seen Mick touching up little girls in the pool while he was pretending to teach them to dive.
On December 4, the police arrested Mick again and, two days later, they announced that he had confessed to killing Rachel within an hour of abducting her. They sent off to Interpol for his criminal record and declared that he had a history of indecent assault. Mick Cook looked like a very guilty man.
But back at Vale Navio, they were not so sure. They had never been too impressed by the Porkie police who they reckoned were more interested in backhanders than clues. And, more than that, they had a suspect of their own – the little girl’s stepfather, Raymond Derek Charles.
Ray Charles had never been particularly popular in Vale Navio. He was a big man with a blunt manner, inclined to boast about acres of land he owned or thousands of pounds he had stashed away in the bank when everyone knew he was more or less broke. There was a rumour that he had changed his name, that he was on the run from something in England, and everyone knew he drank too much and had a lousey temper. They also didn’t like the way he treated his stepdaughter. As far as they could see, he had always hated Rachel and been jealous of her relationship with her mother and taken every chance to yell at her for the slightest thing she did wrong.
But no-one had ever suspected that he would hurt her, not until she went missing, not until Ray started to behave rather strangely during the search: he stayed at home on his own drinking while Carol went to friends to be comforted; then he said he had been to see a medium who wanted them to search 20 miles inland, far away from where Rachel was eventually found; then in the early hours of Wednesday morning, he went off on his own for four hours and returned with scratches on his legs; that afternoon, he abandoned the search just as they closed in on the area where the shoes and bag were found, as if he knew they were about to find them and did not want to be there when it happened. That was when the talk about him really got going.
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continuing:
And in the 24 hours after Rachel’s body was found, the speculation became feverish. Ray was telling people that Rachel was happier now, that she was in a better place, then he started saying that he had seen her on Tuesday night in a vision and that he had known then that she was dead. Several of the men went to check out Ray’s car – which was red with foreign plates – and in the back they found a rope and blanket covered in pine needles. Finally, deep in drink, in conversation with a Vale Navio timeshare salesman named Mike Cunningham, Ray made what sounded very much like a confession.
According to Cunningham, Ray was rambling almost incoherently, saying: “My little girl, my darling, she died on Tuesday night, she came to me and said ‘Daddy, I love you’. I told her ‘Don’t worry, darling, we will be dancing together with the angels twelve months from now’.” Cunningham says that Ray paused in the middle of this drunken monologue, stared down at his feet for a while and then took his breath away by adding: “Her time was up. Her time was up. She had to go and I put her down.”
That Sunday evening, three days after the discovery of the body, Ray was standing at the bar in the Wonkey Donkey, when Bill Taylor, the manager of the timeshare touts who worked the streets, confronted him with the suspicions that were, by then, being voiced by almost everyone in Vale Navio. Numerous other people in the bar heard what followed.
Ray, who was drunk, began it by asking Taylor who he thought had killed the girl. Taylor went straight to the point.
“Ray, I think you did it.”
The bar went rather quiet and everyone watched Ray whose face registered shock and irritation. “What do you mean?” he said finally.
“I think you did it.”
Ray now started to grumble and swear at Taylor, who nevertheless carried on pushing.
“Why, Ray? Why? A nine-year-old kid! How could you do it, Ray? Why?”
Everyone waited while Ray Charles shook his head and finally shrugged and sighed and spoke. “I don’t know,” he said and turned away.
*
Few on Vale Navio now doubted that Ray had killed his stepdaughter and most believed he had done it simply because he was drunk and bad-tempered and he wanted Rachel’s mother, Carol, to himself. Others believed it might be more complicated, that Rachel had found out too much about some criminal scam that Ray was planning or that Ray had been working secretly for some businessmen who wanted to take over Vale Navio and that one of the gangster groups who was involved in the place had found out and killed Rachel in front of him to teach him a lesson. Mike Cunningham, Bill Taylor and others went to the police to tell them about Ray, but the police seemed indifferent and on Vale Navio they wondered whether someone might be paying the Porkies to blame it all on Mick Cook.
The certainty on Vale Navio that Ray was involved was soon matched by the uncertainty that began to cloud the case against Mick Cook. He said he had never signed any confession, but the police had beaten him until he agreed verbally that he was guilty. Five of them had worked on him, he said, punching him, banging his head against the wall, beating the soles of his feet with sticks, jumping on his back, forcing a gun into his mouth (and chipping a tooth in the process). He had ended up bleeding, semi-conscious, with his trousers full of his own faeces. Finally, as he put it in a letter from jail: “I just wanted the pain to stop. I said ‘if you say that’s how it was, then that’s how it must have been.’”
He agreed that he had popped into Vale Navio on the day of the abduction, but he had forgotten: it was only to buy a phone card, he said, and then he had sat in his car in the shade for a few minutes and done some paperwork and driven away at 4.30. He said that the gardener who had seen the abduction had been confronted with him and his car on the Tuesday, while the search was still in progress, but he had shaken his head and said he couldn’t identify Mick. It turned out that the tyre tracks which had been found near the body did not come from Mick’s car and, furthermore, none of the scientific tests had found a single link between the dead girl and Mick or his car: most of the hair they had found came from a dog.
It became clear that some of the police procedure had been clumsy. They had failed to cordon off the area around the body. They had mistakenly frozen the girl’s body for 12 hours before the post-mortem, making it impossible to establish a time of death or even a day of death. They had found blood under one of her finger nails but they said it was too small for their old-fashioned laboratories to test for a blood type. They had allowed the body to be cremated within a week, making it impossible for Cook’s lawyers to arrange their own post-mortem. The Portuguese woman who took the ransom call in the sales office had identified Mick Cook’s voice but since it was the only voice that the police had asked her to listen to, the identification was worthless. It was the same with the riding instructor who thought he had seen Mick near the trees where the body was found: he had now positively identified him but he had done so in an ID parade which had begun and ended with a detective pointing at Mick and saying “Is this him?”
There were so many errors that, on Vale Navio, they smelled corruption. Cook’s family were told that three Algarve businessmen had paid a bribe of £40,000 to ensure that Mick went to jail; the source for this claim was so sure of his ground that he signed a formal statement with Essex police (??) explaining that his information came from the criminal who had acted as go-between in paying the bribe. In jail awaiting trial, Cook said there was no evidence against him and he was sure he would get off. On Vale Navio, they had less faith in Portuguese justice.
When the trial finally opened, in February 1992, it was a disaster for Cook. There were just about no hard facts in the prosecution case and so there was nothing to fight against: if the defence succeeded in producing a hard fact to help Mick Cook, the prosecution simply absorbed it and changed their case. The police had said originally that Cook had strangled Rachel Charles with the rope they had found in his car. Scientific tests undermined that: there was no blood or skin in the rope, and there was no fibre from the rope on the girl. So the police then said that he had strangled her with another piece of rope which he had thrown into the woods as he drove away from her body. That, too, was undermined when the police had to admit that they had failed to find any such rope anywhere in the area. So the police then said that this only went to prove how careful Cook had been to hide the murder weapon where they wouldn’t find it. The judges agreed with that.
The police had no motive. They had said it was a sex crime, but there was no sign of a sexual assault of any kind and Rachel was fully clothed, apart from her shoes, when she was found. They had no time of death. They had said she must have been killed very soon after her abduction because the riding instructor had seen Mick disposing of the body on that Monday afternoon, but there was a fundamental problem with this. The riding instructor was sure that he had seen the man getting into a red car at 5.20: but three witnesses said Mick was back at the garage where he was working, ten minutes’ drive away, by 5.15. The judges dealt with this by changing the timing of the riding instructor’s statement to “shortly after five o’clock”.
But Mick Cook had no alibi. No one remembered him going to the drug store to buy coloured tape for the side of a car. No one remembered him buying a phone card at Vale Navio. And they said he had a history of indecent assault. The judges said he was guilty of a particularly vicious crime. Mick Cook shrugged and said there was no way he’d had anything to do with it. Then he was sent to prison for 19 years.
For the Vale Navio Brits, it was a stinking conspiracy, proof of everything they had always said about Porkie justice. Mick was innocent, Ray was guilty and every time someone uncovered new information, it confirmed their view – at least, it did for a while.
*
In England, Mick’s brother, Colin, managed to obtain the Portuguese police file on the case. It included a fax, sent via Interpol, which detailed Mick Cook’s entire criminal record. He had six convictions for theft, receiving stolen goods and causing bodily harm – nothing for any kind of sex crime – and the Portuguese authorities had known this all the time they were claiming that he had convictions for indecent assault.
In Portugal, the detective in charge of the case suddenly left the force; Cook’s Lisbon lawyer was badly injured in a mysterious car crash, which killed his wife; the manager of Vale Navio left the country, saying his life had been threatened and he would never return; Mick Cook heard that Ray Charles had been involved with some heavy crime and that Rachel had been killed “to teach him a lesson”. In November 1992, Ray died of cancer in Faro hospital, still denying guilt even though his friends from Vale Navio secretly tape-recorded one of their last meetings with him in the hope that he would make a death-bed confession.
The Guardian became involved and discovered that on the day of Rachel’s abduction, Ray Charles had spent the morning looking at property in the hills north of Vale Navio and that, even though he had no money, he told an estate agent that he had 15 million escudos to spend, about £60,000. The estate agent thought his manner was very strange and when he heard the next day that this man’s child was missing, he immediately wondered out loud to his partner whether her stepfather might have had something to do with it, whether perhaps he had even set up a kidnap.
On the face of it, the estate agent’s theory made no sense, since Ray Charles would have been extorting ransom from himself. But there had indeed been a ransom call – on the Tuesday, about 20 hours after Rachel was abducted – and this turned out to have a significance which had been ignored by the police, who dismissed it and pursued their theory that this was a sex crime.
The woman who took the call, Cidalia Sequeria, was then working in the sales office of Vale Navio with an English woman, Janet Berry. The call was made at 1.30, at a time when Janet Berry was always out at lunch and when Cidalia was always in the office alone and, Cidalia explained, the caller had phoned the main number at Vale Navio and asked to be put through to her by name. It appears, therefore, that the caller wanted to avoid Janet Berry because, as a member of the English community in Vale Navio, she might have recognised the voice.
But why phone the sales office at all? The answer lies in the caller’s message, which was written down at the time by Cidalia. “Listen carefully to what I am going to say. We have Rachel Charles. We want £300,000 by Thursday and the girl will be released.” The caller said he would phone again the next day with details of where to leave the money, then he hung up. The point is that the caller never mentioned Rachel’s family. He didn’t say “Tell Mr and Mrs Charles they have to pay £300,000.” Because the call was an attempt to extort ransom from Vale Navio – not from the Charles family – which is why it was directed at the sales office, at the people who dealt with the money. To begin with it worked: within an hour of the ransom call, Janet Berry had called the manager, who was on holiday in England, and he had agreed to pay the ransom for the sake of the child’s mother and also to protect Vale Navio’s business from the calamity.
All this suggests that Ray Charles may well have set up the kidnap. Friends of the family say Rachel would not have dared to defy Ray’s anger by telling anyone what had happened. But if that was the plan, something went terribly wrong during the night after the ransom call – when Ray vanished for four hours and returned with scratches on his legs. The child died, the ransom calls stopped and then the police moved in and got it all wrong. Except that they didn’t.
Ray Charles may have been involved in the death of his stepdaughter, but he did not abduct her. The Guardian has spoken to numerous witnesses to pin down the exact timing of the abduction – the man who drove the schoolbus that day and remembers being held up along the way and arriving at Vale Navio ten minutes later than usual, at 4.25; the Vale Navio parents who were waiting for the bus and saw Rachel cross the road and disappear around the corner two or three minutes later; the gardener who knows it was about 4.30 when he saw the little girl getting into a red car, because he was looking forward to going home at 5.00 and knows he still had about 30 minutes to go. At 4.30, Ray Charles was at home with his wife, Carol, and their babysitter, Georgie, who made separate statements to the police from which they have never diverged. He has a solid alibi.
So, who adbucted Rachel Charles? There was another man in Vale Navio that afternoon, who was driving a red car. He had been parked near the bus stop since 4.05; an English woman from Vale Navio called Sue Court had noticed him several times and thought he must be waiting for someone. A teacher from Rachel’s school, Kim Dring, who had left the school a couple of minutes after the bus, also saw him just as she arrived at Vale Navio, just as Rachel was going off around the corner. He was sitting in his car near the bus stop and as Kim Dring parked behind him, just before 4.30, he pulled away and waved at her as he went. Kim waved back as he drove around the corner because she knew him well. It was Mick Cook.
The next time anyone saw Mick Cook was when he arrived back at the garage where he paid the Porkies to do his panel-beating for him. That was at 5.15. Three witnesses agree to the timing. But this garage is less than one minute’s drive from Vale Navio. So – quite apart from the fact that not one will confirm that he was in the drug store and then went to Vale Navio and bought a phone care – there are 45 minutes missing from Mick Cook’s movements on Monday November 19 and during those 45 minutes, Rachel Charles was adbucted – from the road where he was driving, at the time that he was driving there, by a man with a car of the colour and nationality that he was driving. The gardener still says he cannot be sure that it was Mick Cook’s car, only that it looked like it.
This does not mean that Cook then killed Rachel. The police account of his murdering her is deeply flawed. It was not a sex crime. The child was almost certainly not killed on Monday afternoon at all: even though the pathologist could give no time of death, we have established that her stomach contents bore no relation to the meal she had eaten on Monday lunchtime, strongly suggesting that she was kept somewhere and fed at least one meal before she died. The man seen by the riding instructor is, therefore nothing to do with the crime at all. The tyre tracks which the police discovered lead away from the beaten track through the woods to the tree where Rachel was found, so it is highly likely that they belong the car which dumped her body, and they do not match Cook’s TR7.
For the killing, Ray Charles remains a much better suspect. Although he and Cook had argued in the past, it seems likely that the two men, possibly with others, decided to fake the kidnap in order to make themselves some easy money. Since his conviction, Cook has started to hint that he was involved in a whole load of fiddles in the Algarve – taking bags of cash down to the BCCI bank in Gibraltar, smuggling precious stones in consignments of car parts, getting himself beaten up by the brother-in-law of one of the most powerful gangsters in Portugal. Taking Rachel was the best fiddle yet, hardly even a crime if he was taking her with her dad’s say-so, no chance of her getting hurt, and he’d get his cut of £300,000 for a day’s work.
The reason for the murder remains a mystery, but if this was an attempt by Ray and Mick to extort cash from Vale Navio, it was a most dangerous game since the hands of Portuguese gangsters have never been far from the complex. It is possible that as soon as the manager agreed to pay up, the gangsters realised exactly what was happening and solved the problem with brutal efficiency, ending the kidnap and ruining the lives of both men. Each then blamed the other, neither able to tell the whole truth for fear of confirming their own guilt – and provoking more vengeance if they named the gangsters.
*
As a result of the Guardian’s inquiries, Mick Cook’s family have pressed him to explain what he was really doing during the missing 45 minutes on that Monday afternoon. On the phone to his parents in Southend, he said he could not remember. His brother, Colin, flew out to see him and confronted him. Mick told him the old story again and said he thought someone was out to get him.
Categories: Miscarriage of justice.
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
Absolutely ridiculous suggestion that the pj were waitingto beat up kate and gerry mccann LOOOOOL!!!!! Pathetic
True. The PJ tend to stick to beating up uneducated peasants.
I wouldn't advise you to go there on holiday.
Well i guess educated doctors thendidnt have to worry, so much for thebritish consul running in to prevent torture lol, sigh
Your problem is there is no evidence the police beat that wretched woman up over and above her inmates
And what is the purpose of this thread if torture was not used n the mccanns! In any way shape or form and never was going to be, ever?
So perhaps you can tell me why Amaral wrote and signed a report saying that she had injured herself falling down the stairs if this never happened?
And then went to Court and said the same thing. Something not quite right there. And it's still perjury.
Excellent point Eleanor 8@??)(
Yep as Amaral wasaid that the injuries happened, when Leonor fell down the stairs, whilst in custody: how come you are saying that they happened in Jail?
I have read that Amaral tried it on, and pressed prison Governor, Dr Ana, to take half the blame, but she refused .... as there was no blame attached to the prison. She was the humane person who insisted that Leonor went to a doctor and that photographs be taken of the bruises.
Well done, Dr Ana <<< a brave woman to take on the fascist PJ. Not saying all the PJ is fascist, but BIG pointers that a certain section of Faro/Portimao PJ was
Only my opinion, but the pointers are there
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Ah that person has something in common with Amaral then
he too is a convicted perjurer
"The offense of willfully telling an untruth in a court after having taken an oath or affirmation".
Perjury, even if true, which it wasnt, miles different from MURDERING YOUR OWN CHILD...disgusting at best for you to even compare, my ignore a plank metre must be broke, off to reset it
Justice is not a 'pick and mix' stall - if you raise perjury - I'll do the same
Whether other deeds are relevant is not the issue
The subject is perjury - not - let's say - swindling your brother out of money, being p*ssed in charge of a case of a disappeared child or threatening to kill peeps you don't like
Seperate issues - not to be confused with one another
In this country if the main prosecution witness ie Cipriano, was found to have perjured herself during Amaral and his co-defendants trial then that would certainly give grounds for appeal and more than likely a quashing of the guilty verdict.
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Thanks for that article, Sadie. But it doesn't alter the fact that torture occurred. Whether or not these people are guilty is beside the point.
And Amaral might to well to consider before he appeals. He is still an Arguido awaiting trial for the accusation of personally beating Leandro Silva who was never charged or found guilty of anything.
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
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There is never any excuse for Torture, anywhere.
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There is never any excuse for Torture, anywhere.
8@??)(
Never ... anywhere
Nor for bullying
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What has this topic got anything to do with the Mccann case ?
Many regimes around the world use torture.
The UK government colluded in torture in 'rendition' cases involving the USA.
The Mccanns weren't tortured.
Some people with a bare grasp of reality try to claim the PJ tried to fit up the Mccanns, yet another myth.
As was the rubbish coming through from Mccanns sister claiming that Ms. Mccann was offered a 'deal' if she confessed. Another myth, deals aren't allowed in Portuguese law.
Essentially this post amongst others is to take attention away from the real issues.
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Think you find Barry George is the guilty party, just lucky the Police didn't do their job properly at the time
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Think you find Barry George is the guilty party, just lucky the Police didn't do their job properly at the time
What?
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Faithlily
The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect. HOWEVER find me cases of Torture in the UK.
This topic is TORTURE by the PJ, and by gawd there is plenty of evidence of that
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Faithlily
The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect. HOWEVER find me cases of Torture in the UK.
This topic is TORTURE by the PJ, and by gawd there is plenty of evidence of that
There was plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE. You may be too young to remember.
It was not abnormal for the police to use rubber hose beatings (leaves limited marks) or suffocation by plastic bag- much like water boarding.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/west-midlands-serious-crime-squad-police-unit-to-blame-for-dozens-more-injustices-1120219.html
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Faithlily
The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect. HOWEVER find me cases of Torture in the UK.
This topic is TORTURE by the PJ, and by gawd there is plenty of evidence of that
There was plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE. You may be too young to remember.
It was not abnormal for the police to use rubber hose beatings (leaves limited marks) or suffocation by plastic bag- much like water boarding.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/west-midlands-serious-crime-squad-police-unit-to-blame-for-dozens-more-injustices-1120219.html
Very kind of you to suggest that iI am too young to remember it 8**8:/: @)(++(*
I dont remember it, but perhaps I was too busy working, raising children and looking after aged parents to really notice what was going on in the world? THank God that the British Police have altered their ways. Time for the PT police to do likewise.
They have made a step forward getting rid of Amaral and Cristavao. Anyone know if the other convicted torturers from Faro/Portimao branch PJ have been "relieved of their duty" yet?
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I well remember arguing with people with fixed mind set about "Us Brits having the best police in the world" while they closed their eyes to the problems with the Met and their specialist squads, crime squads in the other areas and local corruption. It still goes on, though it is more difficult now.
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debunker, if that comment is aimed at me, then I dont think you read my comment just up the page
sadie The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect.
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debunker, if that comment is aimed at me, then I dont think you read my comment just up the page
sadie The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect.
Just a general comment.
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What has this topic got anything to do with the Mccann case ?
Many regimes around the world use torture.
The UK government colluded in torture in 'rendition' cases involving the USA.
The Mccanns weren't tortured.
Some people with a bare grasp of reality try to claim the PJ tried to fit up the Mccanns, yet another myth.
As was the rubbish coming through from Mccanns sister claiming that Ms. Mccann was offered a 'deal' if she confessed. Another myth, deals aren't allowed in Portuguese law.
Essentially this post amongst others is to take attention away from the real issues.
What real issues would they be?
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
Absolutely ridiculous suggestion that the pj were waitingto beat up kate and gerry mccann LOOOOOL!!!!! Pathetic
True. The PJ tend to stick to beating up uneducated peasants.
I wouldn't advise you to go there on holiday.
Yes. The PJ got more than they bargained for when they tried to frame Kate and Gerry McCann. I'm thankful that the British Embassy and British Government stepped in straight away.
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Fair point, faithlilly. However, we are talking about PT police brutality on this thread. For the record though, I do agree with you on the Barry George point.
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And some people wonder why The British Embassy sent staff hot footing down to The Algarve he minute Madeleine disappeared. They were only too aware of what went on in some Police Stations.
Absolutely ridiculous suggestion that the pj were waitingto beat up kate and gerry mccann LOOOOOL!!!!! Pathetic
True. The PJ tend to stick to beating up uneducated peasants.
I wouldn't advise you to go there on holiday.
Yes. The PJ got more than they bargained for when they tried to frame Kate and Gerry McCann. I'm thankful that the British Embassy and British Government stepped in straight away.
So you have proof that the PJ tried to FIT UP G and K straight away then? Which led the British authorities there rush to the scene pdq? In less than 24 hours
8**8:/:
And if you are thankful they did so and prevented it, how can you say three, four months later, that the Pj were STILL trying to fit them up? Did the British Embassy leave them to it then?
i think you will find the British authorities rushed to the scene for totally other reasons, and not because they thought K and G were about to be beaten up or fitted up!
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Oh, do come on, RedBlossom. According to his book Amaral decided on the 4th of May that The McCanns had done it, so what do you think he was doing?
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Faithlily
The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect. HOWEVER find me cases of Torture in the UK.
This topic is TORTURE by the PJ, and by gawd there is plenty of evidence of that
There was plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE. You may be too young to remember.
It was not abnormal for the police to use rubber hose beatings (leaves limited marks) or suffocation by plastic bag- much like water boarding.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/west-midlands-serious-crime-squad-police-unit-to-blame-for-dozens-more-injustices-1120219.html
Really ? Before Pace you say ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-used-unsuitable-force-on-mentally-ill-man-sean-rigg-who-died-in-custody-jury-finds-7999484.html
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Oh, do come on, RedBlossom. According to his book Amaral decided on the 4th of May that The McCanns had done it, so what do you think he was doing?
Oh yes, Amaral and his book. Written about people that he had never even met. People who the PJ didn't even have enough evidence against to even arrest - never mind charge.
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Oh, do come on, RedBlossom. According to his book Amaral decided on the 4th of May that The McCanns had done it, so what do you think he was doing?
Oh yes, Amaral and his book. Written about people that he had never even met. People who the PJ didn't even have enough evidence against to even arrest - never mind charge.
Look now, Amaral tried to fit up The McCanns because he was in serious trouble over The Cipriano Affair. I don't really care about this because it failed. But I might have done if it hadn't.
Amaral was a small town Copper with a Fascist bent who sought to follow his Cristovao cohort, and to make money from a scurrilous book that didn't actually say very much at all. It was his Video and subsequent television interviews that put the tin hat on it. In those he did catogorically state that The McCanns were culpable.
Okay, Prove it.
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Coming up Full Moon, Folks. Beware. Even I get more emotive at this time.
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Oh, do come on, RedBlossom. According to his book Amaral decided on the 4th of May that The McCanns had done it, so what do you think he was doing?
Oh yes, Amaral and his book. Written about people that he had never even met. People who the PJ didn't even have enough evidence against to even arrest - never mind charge.
Look now, Amaral tried to fit up The McCanns because he was in serious trouble over The Cipriano Affair. I don't really care about this because it failed. But I might have done if it hadn't.
Amaral was a small town Copper with a Fascist bent who sought to follow his Cristovao cohort, and to make money from a scurrilous book that didn't actually say very much at all. It was his Video and subsequent television interviews that put the tin hat on it. In those he did catogorically state that The McCanns were culpable.
Okay, Prove it.
If the book didn't say much at all and was so insignificant why have the McCanns spent hundreds of thousands of pounds from the fund to first have the thing banned and then to sue for libel ?
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Oh, do come on, RedBlossom. According to his book Amaral decided on the 4th of May that The McCanns had done it, so what do you think he was doing?
Oh yes, Amaral and his book. Written about people that he had never even met. People who the PJ didn't even have enough evidence against to even arrest - never mind charge.
Look now, Amaral tried to fit up The McCanns because he was in serious trouble over The Cipriano Affair. I don't really care about this because it failed. But I might have done if it hadn't.
Amaral was a small town Copper with a Fascist bent who sought to follow his Cristovao cohort, and to make money from a scurrilous book that didn't actually say very much at all. It was his Video and subsequent television interviews that put the tin hat on it. In those he did catogorically state that The McCanns were culpable.
Okay, Prove it.
If the book didn't say much at all and was so insignificant why have the McCanns spent hundreds of thousands of pounds from the fund to first have the thing banned and then to sue for libel ?
They aren't just suing Amaral or just his book. I thought you would have known that.
And how do you know that the money is coming from The Fund? No one has lost yet. So we don't know who will be paying.
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Faithlily
The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect. HOWEVER find me cases of Torture in the UK.
This topic is TORTURE by the PJ, and by gawd there is plenty of evidence of that
There was plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE. You may be too young to remember.
It was not abnormal for the police to use rubber hose beatings (leaves limited marks) or suffocation by plastic bag- much like water boarding.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/west-midlands-serious-crime-squad-police-unit-to-blame-for-dozens-more-injustices-1120219.html
Really ? Before Pace you say ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-used-unsuitable-force-on-mentally-ill-man-sean-rigg-who-died-in-custody-jury-finds-7999484.html
Try reading and understanding English.
As I said there was "...plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE". Note the word 'plenty'. After PACE there has been considerably less, but it still happens.
You see when you use the word 'plenty' it does not mean there was none afterwards.
..........................moderated......................
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Faithlily
You are missing the point. This is about the Torture of the PJ in the Algarve ... and there is plenty of evidence of that.
Nothing to do with the PJ in general ... or the British Police.
Please do not side track the discussion
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Faithlily
You are missing the point. This is about the Torture of the PJ in the Algarve ... and there is plenty of evidence of that.
Nothing to do with the PJ in general ... or the British Police.
Please do not side track the discussion
There is not 'plenty of evidence' of torture by the PJ. You have posted about four or five, one of them certainly questionable due to Cipriano's conviction for perjury.
The point I was making is there are many examples of maltreatment in custody in UK yet we don't tar all police with the same brush and that is very relevant to a discussion where you are trying to imply torture is rife in Portugal because of a few isolated incidents.
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Faithlily
You are missing the point. This is about the Torture of the PJ in the Algarve ... and there is plenty of evidence of that.
Nothing to do with the PJ in general ... or the British Police.
Please do not side track the discussion
There is not 'plenty of evidence' of torture by the PJ. You have posted about four or five, one of them certainly questionable due to Cipriano's conviction for perjury.
The point I was making is there are many examples of maltreatment in custody in UK yet we don't tar all police with the same brush and that is very relevant to a discussion where you are trying to imply torture is rife in Portugal because of a few isolated incidents.
I made a p PST earlier today showing that torture and beatings are stillcomon in Portuguese police interrogations. That is not currently the case in the UK.
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Here
http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=1365.0
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Faithlily
The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect. HOWEVER find me cases of Torture in the UK.
This topic is TORTURE by the PJ, and by gawd there is plenty of evidence of that
There was plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE. You may be too young to remember.
It was not abnormal for the police to use rubber hose beatings (leaves limited marks) or suffocation by plastic bag- much like water boarding.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/west-midlands-serious-crime-squad-police-unit-to-blame-for-dozens-more-injustices-1120219.html
Really ? Before Pace you say ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-used-unsuitable-force-on-mentally-ill-man-sean-rigg-who-died-in-custody-jury-finds-7999484.html
Try reading and understanding English.
As I said there was "...plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE". Note the word 'plenty'. After PACE there has been considerably less, but it still happens.
You see when you use the word 'plenty' it does not mean there was none afterwards Only a really stupid person with poor English comprehension would make that error. Or someone so biassed that they were more interested in point scoring rather than finding the truth.
The article proves maltreatment is still a rife. You implied it wasn't.
There is no place in proper debate for personal insults, unless of course you have nothing else to 'debate' with ?{)(**
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@ sadie
So you can find four or five cases of suspects being allegedly ill-treated by the Portuguese police. I can swamp that if you like by reports of ill-treatment by our good old British bobbies, some even by Nick Davies.
Why the very people who are carrying out the review SY are implicated in some of the cases, just ask Barry George. In fact the police fitting up of suspects is so rife that we even have a miscarriage of justice organisation to deal with the cases in doubt.
Faithlily
The British Polce are generally good, but nobody is saying they are perfect. HOWEVER find me cases of Torture in the UK.
This topic is TORTURE by the PJ, and by gawd there is plenty of evidence of that
There was plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE. You may be too young to remember.
It was not abnormal for the police to use rubber hose beatings (leaves limited marks) or suffocation by plastic bag- much like water boarding.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/west-midlands-serious-crime-squad-police-unit-to-blame-for-dozens-more-injustices-1120219.html
Really ? Before Pace you say ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-used-unsuitable-force-on-mentally-ill-man-sean-rigg-who-died-in-custody-jury-finds-7999484.html
Try reading and understanding English.
As I said there was "...plenty in the 70s and 80s before PACE". Note the word 'plenty'. After PACE there has been considerably less, but it still happens.
You see when you use the word 'plenty' it does not mean there was none afterwards Only a really stupid person with poor English comprehension would make that error. Or someone so biassed that they were more interested in point scoring rather than finding the truth.
The article proves maltreatment is still a rife. You implied it wasn't.
There is no place in proper debate for personal insults, unless of course you have nothing else to 'debate' with ?{)(**
All the article shows is that the police used a dangerous method of restraint. He was not being tortured to get a confession.
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FGS
Did you read the opening post, which is part of Hansard records
Cook appeared in court, with black eyes and a missing tooth, and he was deeply bruised. It is claimed that Cook was hung from an upstairs window by his feet, that his feet were beaten until he could not stand, that he was tied to a chair and beaten, that he was deprived of sleep, and that a revolver was forced into his mouth and the trigger pulled in a mock execution.
Just a tiny guy, 5ft tall, hung upside down from an upstairs window, by his feet. Feet beaten, deprived of sleep, revolver forced in his mouth and trigger pulled in mock execution, black eyes and a missing tooth. And more in the second post.
Was he ever tortured!
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And how do you know that the money is coming from The Fund? No one has lost yet. So we don't know who will be paying.
It is a FACT that the fund was used for portuguese lawyers to challenge Mr Amaral in court,you obviously havent read their accounts for 2009 and 2010, thats pretty basic stuff