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: DCI on June 06, 2013, 07:05:45 PM
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Information that was Amarals responsibilty, as coordinator to keep private, under Portugal's secrecy law. ?>)()<
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Information that was Amarals responsibilty, as coordinator to keep private, under Portugal's secrecy law. ?>)()<
The silence is deafening...
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The silence is deafening...
Isn't it, just, lol.
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Information that was Amarals responsibilty, as coordinator to keep private, under Portugal's secrecy law. ?>)()<
Care to give an example? So we can discuss it? Tia
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Selling is always easy to define. One gets paid for doing it.
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Selling is always easy to define. One gets paid for doing it.
Yes, but "payment" can be in many forms.
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Yes, but "payment" can be in many forms.
Well Cabrita, got it, by which ever means @)(++(*
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Well Cabrita, got it, by which ever means @)(++(*
So care to give an example in betwixt your backslapping mutual mates?
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Cabrita had their names and phone numbers and details from their witness statements.
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Well Cabrita, got it, by which ever means @)(++(*
And presumably paid the price, by which ever means.
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Cabrita had their names and phone numbers and details from their witness statements.
if that was to me, care to adtually say exactly what you mean? For the the benefit of people who dont who cabritas is and what exacly he did and when, thanks, abs that includes me tia
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if that was to me, care to adtually say exactly what you mean? For the the benefit of people who dont who cabritas is and what exacly he did and when, thanks, abs that includes me tia
It wasn't. And I don't take orders, ask nicely 8-)(--)
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It wasn't. And I don't take orders, ask nicely 8-)(--)
i never gave any orders anywhere, misreading? Just would help readers know what you are talking about in order to contribute unkess you are not interested in debate but just to get backslaps from your kith which seems more likely and if the case is a total waste of this boards bandwidth and most peoples time
8((()*/
Anyone else know what dci is on about, willing to share? Ta
8((()*/
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Bridget O'Donnell / David James Smith
It was the first time the McCanns' friends had been named in public, but Sol's journalist Felicia Cabrita had their names and phone numbers and details from their witness statements.
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The information had been handed to Cabrita by the police - she says she acquired the material through good journalism, which in a sense it was - and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral.
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And she thought she would give them a ring, in June 2007 8()(((@#
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Bridget O'Donnell / David James Smith
It was the first time the McCanns' friends had been named in public, but Sol's journalist Felicia Cabrita had their names and phone numbers and details from their witness statements.
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The information had been handed to Cabrita by the police - she says she acquired the material through good journalism, which in a sense it was - and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral.
Sorry that post makes no sense whatsoever to me, I just dont understand what you are saying, care to explain for readers not in the *inner circle*, rude not to
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And she thought she would give them a ring, in June 2007 8()(((@#
Only available on Google Cache these days, for me at least. On McCann files all references to Cabrita have been removed and replaced by *. Now, why would that be, I wonder.
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Only available on Google Cache these days, for me at least. On McCann files all references to Cabrita have been removed and replaced by *. Now, why would that be, I wonder.
Found the other one, I was looking for.
http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Felicia-Cabrita/1281322029
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Here Bridget's article!
They couldn't remove that one lol.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/dec/14/ukcrime.madeleinemccann
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Here Bridget's article!
They couldn't remove that one lol.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/dec/14/ukcrime.madeleinemccann
Err she wrote that article herself for the British press, what has cabrita whoever he is got to do with that and releasing private phone numbers where? What a rubbish thread
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"The information had been handed to Cabrita by the police – she says she acquired the material through good journalism, which in a sense it was – and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral." - Sun 16 December 2007, The Sunday Times, Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears by David James Smith.
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Err she wrote that article herself for the British press, what has cabrita whoever he is got to do with that and releasing private phone numbers where? What a rubbish thread
She was on holiday, don't you know she's Jez Wilkins wife?
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She was on holiday, don't you know she's Jez Wilkins wife?
Yes of course I know that but I cant make head or tail of your and mo staches and others posts about this article and cabrita, seriously confusing as no one is saying on this thread what its all about, cant be that hard to spell it out can it?
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It has been spelled out very clearly indeed.
The PJ were leaking information to the press, to Cabrita in particular.
Do you think they should have been doing that?
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"The information had been handed to Cabrita by the police – she says she acquired the material through good journalism, which in a sense it was – and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral." - Sun 16 December 2007, The Sunday Times, Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears by David James Smith.
Believed by her journalist colleagues eh ? Must be true then @)(++(*
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Believed by her journalist colleagues eh ? Must be true then @)(++(*
Believed or not. The fact is the reporter had material which should have only been known to the police.
Do you think that journalist broke into the police station and stole it?
Or is it more likely that information was given/sold to the journalist?
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It has been spelled out very clearly indeed.
The PJ were leaking information to the press, to Cabrita in particular.
Do you think they should have been doing that?
Says a journalist who has since admitted that he was briefed on parts of the article by Gerry McCann.
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It has been spelled out very clearly indeed.
The PJ were leaking information to the press, to Cabrita in particular.
Do you think they should have been doing that?
You must have had a bypass on the latest news, Gilet.
Leverson has been declared null and void.
Didn't you know?
Someone in authority said so.
Might even have been Red Blossom ....
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Believed or not. The fact is the reporter had material which should have only been known to the police.
Do you think that journalist broke into the police station and stole it?
Or is it more likely that information was given/sold to the journalist?
I believe there are any number of people, apart from Amaral, who would be privy to the information.
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Believed by her journalist colleagues eh ? Must be true then @)(++(*
Ever heard of the Leveson inquiry?
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Ever heard of the Leveson inquiry?
Yes thanks ! Your point ?
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Oh dear, odonnell gave an interview to the times and the pj are at fault? Hey? How does that work? Oh well, nighty nite let me know tomorrow andwhere cabrita came into it editing the times with her name or sneaking her phone number in
>@@(*&)
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I'm sure the PJ/Gonc leaked like sieves to suit their own agendas - PT's byzantine secrecy laws almost invited this in such a massive case
But I suspect Bell Pottinger/MW who had also a vested interest in 'appearing blameless' and might have had a hand in the Sol article - if memory serves, the orig. Sol article 'pact of silence' came out within a few days of the disappearance, journos are pretty quick off the mark - if prodded by a multi million 'damage limitation' company -even more so. Just way too much detail in that one to have originated from the PJ - their PR apparatus took a tad longer to get into gear.
just speculation obviously
but let's see who crawls out of the woodwork now
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"The police transcripts were obtained by the journalist Nacho Abad from the Spanish television programme Ana Rosa Quintant." & "It is believed he got the transcripts from a source in the Portuguese judicial system."
McCanns angered by published police interviews
Angela Balakrishnan
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 April 2008 13.01 BST
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I believe there are any number of people, apart from Amaral, who would be privy to the information.
Who mentioned Amaral?
By whatever means this information could only have come from the Police whether via Spain or Timbuktoo. They were the ones who had the information.
Simple question. Do you think it more likely it was all stolen in some daring moonlight raid or do you think the PJ leaked it?
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Yes thanks ! Your point ?
If you know of the Leveson inquiry (regarding the McCann case) then you will know that it has been documented that the pj leaked like a sieve.
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"The police transcripts were obtained by the journalist Nacho Abad from the Spanish television programme Ana Rosa Quintant." & "It is believed he got the transcripts from a source in the Portuguese judicial system."
McCanns angered by published police interviews
Angela Balakrishnan
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 April 2008 13.01 BST
is that bridget odonnels talking to the times then? Still confused
Can you or ANYONE explain in plain english how her rosy interview to the the times was leaked by the PJ and her phone number??? This thread is like the twilight world series
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Who mentioned Amaral?
By whatever means this information could only have come from the Police whether via Spain or Timbuktoo. They were the ones who had the information.
Simple question. Do you think it more likely it was all stolen in some daring moonlight raid or do you think the PJ leaked it?
Remember this :
"and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral."
As to information, what information are talking about ?
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Yes.
Very short.
Either the information was GIVEN or SOLD to journalists.
Or journalists broke into PJ headquarters and STOLE it.
Which do you think is most likely to have happened?
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Remember this :
"and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral."
As to information, what information are talking about ?
Ah well it could have been Amaral as he was in the Police and was COORDINATOR of ALL the information.
But the fact remains that it was either stolen or leaked/sold and its a lot more rare to find journalists breaking in and stealing info so I know which I think may be most likely.
The answer to your last question has been given earlier in the thread (not a long thread either).
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@ gilet
So we are talking names, addresses and phone numbers, all details that numerous people including family and friends would have.
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Yes, of course, & they would all have rushed out & located an obscure Portuguese Sol journalist to sell her that information so that she could invade their privacy. Yes, makes sense. Especially as we know she had such close links to Amaral.
BTW Wasn't she the one who appeared on a tv show totally stoned out of her brain or was that another one of these top female journalists?
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Yes, of course, & they would all have rushed out & located an obscure Portuguese Sol journalist to sell her that information so that she could invade their privacy. Yes, makes sense. Especially as we know she had such close links to Amaral.
BTW Wasn't she the one who appeared on a tv show totally stoned out of her brain or was that another one of these top female journalists?
It's amazing what people will do for money !
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Even more amazing what people do for free.
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Even more amazing what people do for free.
Really ? Do tell.
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Are you being paid?
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Are you being paid?
For the work I do, of course. Aren't you ?
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For the work I do, of course. Aren't you ?
Oh is it your work? I thought it was your hobby.
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Madeleine Case - A Pact of Silence SOL
By Felicia Cabrita and Margarida Davim
30 June 2007
Madeleine's parents and the friends with whom they spent their holidays in PDL are suspects in the inquiry. There are contradictory versions about the night of the kidnapping, and an assumed pact of silence in the group.
The beginning of June is flowing in a strange way in the Algarve. A chilly wind and overhead clouds help to fill the auditorium of Lagos, where a solidarity concert is being held for the missing English girl. It's been a month since Madeleine McCann vanished without a trace.
A few kilometres from Lagos, in the Ocean Club resort at Praia da Luz, the faint illumination further densifies the climate. At the reception, which leads to the Tapas restaurant, there is nobody. Getting inside is easy.
A Portuguese waiter, but with a British 'behaviour', strikes the first blow on the journalist's plan: "We only serve dinner to the club's clients". "What about a drink?". He says yes.
It's 9.30 p.m. If we were to believe the several members of the McCann's holiday group, and after several mismatching versions, at this time Madeleine was being carried out of her apartment by a dark-haired man, who would be around 35 years old.
From the same table where the group of nine had dinner on that evening, one tries, in vain, to observe the apartment's front - a ground floor apartment that faces the restaurant. A linoleum screen on the side of Tapas and the corridor of bushes that follows the limits of the apartment's back yards prevents any vigilance to that level.
The image of Madeleine - big blue, questioning eyes and an innocent smile, fixed on the photographic films - is always present. It doesn't leave the conversations of whom passes by. One remembers the words that the mother, Kate Healy, is supposed to have said to a friend (and that the husband, Gerry McCann, did not know): "I had a bad premonition about my children, when I found out the Ocean Club had no baby listening service".
The choice of Algarve as a holiday destination would come to change their lives. Everything was arranged with three other couples, with whom they used to travel. Some of them had recently been to Greece, with their children, and the Mark Warner agency, the same that prepared their trip to the Algarve, had done their itinerary for the islands. According to their reports, the hotel where they stayed had a baby listening service - a service that is assured by four or five members of staff who would control the children while the adults dined, by listening through doors and windows to confirm that everything inside was quiet.
At the Tapas bar, from bartenders to staff from the Kid Club, criticism is whispered: "We have a creche where they left their children for most part of the day, where they could be until 11.30 p.m. without spending another Euro. They could also have used our baby-sitters, who stay with the children in their rooms until 1 p.m. In this case, they would have to pay an extra fee, but these people looked like they could afford it", an employee comments, concluding that "this was a very strange group, that never stayed with their children".
The children's routine
The story of Madeleine looks like a tangled ball of wool. In the last days of April, Kate and Gerry, both 39 and doctors, arrive with their friends in Praia da Luz. The weather is not very good, but the group makes the best of it. The children seem to exist outside of the adults' world. In the morning, Kate would take Madeleine, almost 4, and the 2-year old twins, to the Kids Club. The other couples in the group did the same. While the little ones entertained themselves with collages and paintings, the group divided itself between tennis and jogging until lunchtime. In the creche, the girl's picture is taken: "She was shy and had some difficulty in adapting to the group. She always stayed close to the English children she already knew".
It is at lunchtime that the families socialize a bit. After a short nap, the children go back to the Kids Club, while the parents use the activities that the club offers. They only get to meet again in the late afternoon, when the children's dinner is served. Before 8 p.m., Madeleine and her siblings, who seem to function like a clock, are already asleep. Half an hour later, the group of friends meets at Tapas. The staff remember that they only leave at midnight: "They were very lively and drank a bit too much. I didn't even realise they had children, because I never saw them around".
Mathew Oldfield, one of the elements of the group, is back in England. He reacts with surprise upon the contact of Sol, but he does not avoid the conversation: "We drank. We were on holiday. So what?".
And thus the days followed one upon another, at the Ocean Club. The holiday week is almost over and the group's spirit does not change. Nobody had noticed until then, how the children were kept at a distance.
The most reliable way to undrestand what happened on May 3, when Madeleine disappeared, is to analyse the various versions that emerged.
It would have been 10 p.m. when Kate decided to check the children at the apartment. This is the only moment in the story that gathers consensus. Madeleine had vanished from her bedroom and the twins were sleeping like nothing had happened. The mother was back at the restaurant in one leap. She was disoriented.
PJ called two hours later
In seconds, the resort is in turmoil. The group's four men and the club's employees check every corner. They seem to be oblivious of the essential: to call the authorities. GNR is the first to arrive at the scene, but the news only reach Policia Judiciaria (PJ) more than two hours later. The first explanations arise. Where were the parents when the child disappeared? Gerry explains that, inspired in the scheme that some of the friends had used on their holidays in Greece, the nine members of the group took turns in checking on the children with some regularity.
This is the beginning of a story that will change in many chapters. Gerry starts by saying that he first left the table to check on the children around 9.05 p.m. When he entered the apartment the children were fine, he just noticed that the door to their bedroom was partially open. He looked at the window, which was closed, just as the shutters, and relaxed.
Ten minutes later, his friend Jane Tanner, who went around the apartments, crossed ways with a dark-haired man who was walking in the opposite direction, carrying a child. She didn't make any connections either.
A few minutes later, Mathew Oldfield enters the room, sees the McCann children fast asleep, and notices nothing out of the ordinary. It is at 10 p.m. that Maddie's mother discovers her daughter has disappeared. The window was wide open and the shutters were up.
To the GNR, who were in the area with sniffer dogs to search for the child, this is a highly unlikely scenario. One of the military assures: "This is an extremely silent area, where there are practically no passing cars. That shutter was very difficult to lift from the outside, and would have made a lot of noise. It would have been a lot easier to use the door, but there were no signs of a break-in".
This was just one of the reasons why the group became suspicious in the eyes of the investigators. Russell O'Brien, Jane Tanner's husband, is already back in England, but he knows he could be summoned back to Portugal for a deposition anytime. Over the phone with Sol, he tries to keep his British phlegm: "It is normal that we are suspects, and the DNA test is a consequence thereof. We were the closest people involved".
The conversation always comes back to the same issue: the night of the disappearance. The account of that last dinner has disparate versions among the group's members. Some swear that someone left the table every half hour to check on the kids; other reduce that time to half of it. Some say control is made window by window; others say the adults entered each other's apartments.
One of the employees that was on duty that evening does not remember a lot of movement: "I only remember a tall, grey-haired man getting up once from the table". It was Russell, who, two days earlier, also had attended dinner.
An aerobic instructor from the resort entertains the dinner guests at Tapas with a `Quiz'. At 9.30 p.m. the game ends, and Gerry invites her to their table, where she stays for half an hour. During that time, as she later confided to friends, nobody left the table, but one of the chairs was vacant. Najova Chekaya refuses to talk to Sol. And Russell, when the questions start to surround him, loses his sympathy: "I have nothing further to tell you. I am not going to dishonor the promise I assumed with Kate and Gerry. They want to control all information that is disclosed".
Gerry changes his version several times, but he maintains that the door to his children's room was open. Matt revokes his first statement: when he entered Madeleine's room, the door was open and there was more light, as if the shutters had been raised. Here starts to develop the theory that there was already someone inside the apartment. Which reinforces Jane Tanner's version (that she saw a man carrying a child).
Only Jane saw the man carrying a child
But there is a witness whose deposition contradicts this theory. Jeremy Wilkins - a TV producer who had met Maddie's father during their holidays and used to play tennis with him - was walking his eight months old son at that time. He met Gerry, who went out through the apartment's back door after having checked on the children, and the two men exchanged a brief conversation. At that time, if one is to believe the first accounts, Jane would have left Tapas in the direction of the apartment's main entrance, and would have crossed paths with both of them. "It was a very narrow road and I think it would have been almost impossible to walk by without me taking notice", Jeremy says, pointing out the fact that he saw no man carrying a child, as Jane states.
But Jane continues to guarantee that, at the top of the street, she saw a man with a child in his arms.
Although the area is scarcely lit, and the situation did not make her suspicious at the time, she describes the beige trousers, the dark thick jacket and the black classic-style shoes in a detailed way. Once again, Jeremy disagrees: "If that happened, I would have likely seen it".
On the next day, the media circus was fully installed. The first reports are on Sky News first thing in the morning, even before portuguese press takes hold of the story. Journalists and locals dispute the information. Robert Murat, the son of an English mother and a Portuguese father, with little luck in business, does not waste the opportunity. He moves from failed businessman into the role of a translator for the press and the police. Some British journalists, after sucking him to the bones, start suspecting his availability.
The Murat contradiction
Contrarily to the GNR elements and the Ocean Club's staff, who participated in the searches on the night before and assure they did not see Murat around, Gerry and some of his friends guarantee that he was there. And thus he becomes an arguido.
Gerry and Kate's friends, who are interrogated tightly by the PJ over almost a month, refuse to clarify this contradiction, when asked by Sol. "We have a pact. This is our matter only. It is nobody else's business", says David Payne, another element with the group. Minutes after we tried to contact Kate, Gerry, in a fury, calls the Sol journalist: "What do you think you are doing? Do you think you're better than the Portuguese police? I'm going to forward your contact to PJ and you will have to explain yourselves".
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PJ says 'everybody is a suspect'
The director of the Policia Judiciaria in Faro, Guilhermino da Encarnacao, confirmed with Sol that "we do not discard the possibility of having the family and friends as suspects". This is always done "without neglecting other clues. Everybody who was at the resort at the time are suspects".
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id117.html
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.... and thus began the innuendos and distortions, the myth of the "pact," the doubts about Jane Tanner, etc. which has continued to this day.
From where did Felicia Cabrita get the names and telephone numbers of the Tapas 9, despite the so-called judicial secrecy?
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There's a cached copy of the Timesonline article by David Smith James titled "Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears" (the original article has been "amended" on McCannfiles & all reference to Cabrita replaced by a *. Odd that!)
The first public indication of police thinking came at the end of June when the magazine Sol published a story about the McCann group, casting doubts on their evidence and claiming they had undertaken a pact of silence. It was the first time the McCanns’ friends had been named in public, but Sol’s journalist Felicia Cabrita had their names and phone numbers and details from their witness statements. She had called them all, and at least one other witness, Jes Wilkins.
The information had been handed to Cabrita by the police – she says she acquired the material through good journalism, which in a sense it was – and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral.
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Not only did the PJ leak Kate's personal and private diaries.
They made alterations to what Kate wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/nov/23/leveson-inquiry-mccann-testimony-tabloids
Kate and Gerry McCann made an impassioned plea for press regulation after delivering an emotional account of their treatment by the tabloids, describing the string of "disgusting" and "offensive" stories published about them.
Appearing as witnesses at the Leveson inquiry into press standards, the McCanns gave the most powerful testimony heard so far, speaking for nearly two hours without a break as they described the ordeal they have been subjected to by parts of the media since their daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal four years ago.
Kate McCann told a hushed courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice in London how she felt "totally violated" after the publication by the News of the World of her personal diaries in which she recorded her thoughts about her missing daughter.
She said the now defunct newspaper had showed "absolutely no respect for me as a grieving mother" when it ran the story in September 2008 under the headline Kate's Diary: In Her Own Words. "I'd written these words, my thoughts, at the most desperate time of my life," she said.
Mrs McCann added that she had talked about "climbing into a hole and not coming out" after the article appeared. "It made me feel very vulnerable and small. That whole week was very traumatic and every time I thought about it I couldn't believe the injustice."
Her husband, Gerry, said the couple wanted an investigation into how the diary, which was seized and copied by Portuguese police, was leaked to the Murdoch tabloid. Lord Justice Leveson, who has legal powers to summon witnesses and compel evidence, indicated that he might heed their call.
Mr McCann said British newspapers had declared "open season" on them a few months after Madeleine's disappearance in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007. It was "crass and insensitive", he argued, to say that because they engaged with the media in an attempt to find their daughter "the press can write whatever they like about you without punishment. There are standards but there are no penalties for not sticking to them. I see front page headlines every day … and I think information is being written and lives are being harmed by these stories and something has to change. The commercial imperative is not acceptable."
The McCanns' evidence is likely to strengthen the argument for a stricter regime of press regulation. Leveson, who was appointed by David Cameron at the height of the phone-hacking crisis, is due to report within a year.
The McCanns painted a disturbing picture of life at the centre of a media scrum. Gerry McCann said: "We expected the storm to calm with the passage of time but it continued day after day. We had anecdotal evidence from the British journalists in Praia da Luz that the story of Madeleine's disappearance had caught the imagination of the British public and was driving sales in the UK. As a result those journalists were under intense pressure from their newsdesks to file more copy."
Photographers camped outside the house, Kate McCann said, frightening their two young children. "There were several occasions where they would bang on the windows. Amelie said to me several times: 'Mummy, I'm scared.'"
Her husband accused a former editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler, of "berating" them for conducting a 2008 interview with Hello! magazine on the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance.
The couple sued Express Newspapers and secured unprecedented front-page apologies in 2008 after two of the group's titles ran stories which included the allegation that they had sold their daughter to pay off debts. Describing that as "nothing short of disgusting", Gerry McCann said he was amazed no one at Express Newspapers, which also paid the couple record damages of £550,000, had lost their job.
"I've seen no journalist or editor brought to account, be it the Express or any other group … they are repeat offenders, they should lose their privilege of practising," he said.
The McCanns argued that newspapers should not be allowed to take pictures of subjects when they are in public places. They also spoke movingly about their reaction to a front-page Daily Mirror story about Madeleine that declared: "She's dead". It was based on an article in a Portuguese paper, which quoted a source close to the police investigation who said they didn't know if she was alive or dead. Gerry McCann said they learned about the story at 11pm when they were just about to go to bed. "That was one of the most distressing headlines that was just taken from supposition. It was incredible."
Talking about her diary, Kate McCann said she believed that it was taken from her by Portuguese police and later returned. However, she said that someone must have photocopied the private diary and given it to the press.
She said there were minor differences between her own diaries and those that were published by the NoW, leading her to believe that they had been translated from Portuguese and back again.
The paper apologised a week after publishing the diaries and said: "We published the extracts in the belief held in good faith that we had Kate's permission to do so."
Leveson indicated that he might call the journalist who wrote the story to give evidence and might also question other senior executives at the paper, which was closed by Rupert Murdoch in July, about how the diaries were obtained.
Earlier in the day Sheryl Gascoigne, the former wife of Paul Gascoigne, told the inquiry that she had been hounded by press photographers while heavily pregnant. She said she was forced to crawl on her hand and knees while her arm was in a sling to escape the paparazzi.
Gascoigne told Leveson that everyone in the public eye knew that the Press Complaints Commission was "a waste of time". She said corrections should be given the same prominence in newspapers as the articles in which they originally appeared.
Mark Lewis, the solicitor whose clients include the footballers' union chief Gordon Taylor, Milly Dowler's parents and the ex-Premier League footballer Garry Flitcroft, also gave evidence to the inquiry.
He said he had been warned in a telephone call that Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, would sue him if he continued to claim that the paper had been involved in phone hacking.
Lewis said that threat was made in a phone conversation with a Daily Mail lawyer, Liz Hartley, on 25 January 2011. "Be aware that Paul Dacre is someone who will sue you if you suggest that we were involved in hacking," Hartley allegedly told him.
He also claimed that he had heard from a journalist that Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, had threatened to "get him back" for demanding her resignation and that she would exact her revenge in another newspaper.
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There is absolutely no doubt that information which was under Secrecy was leaked by The PJ. Hopefully for money because any other reason for doing this could only have been to alter Public Opinion about The McCanns in a totally unfair manner, and then to probably influence a Jury should the case have come to Trial..
Whether or not it was Goncalo Amaral who did this is not clear, but there is also no question that he used this information to write his book before the case was shelved. So therefor his book is based on false premise.
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One detail that's always intrigued me is this correspondence between Amaral and the Portuguese forensic laboratory:
Letter to the National Forensics Institute (INML) from Goncalo Amaral
17th August 2007
The present inquiry is in relation to the investigation of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann on 3rd May from P da L.
The English authorities in possession of elements collected from the family home in Leicestershire, which are being examined in an unidentified laboratory, traced the girl's DNA profile, in annex to this document.
As it is necessary to the investigation we request the following:
1. Whether in the tests done by the INML Madeleine's profile was established?
2. In the case of a positive answer to point 1, that it should be determined whether the girl is the daughter of the parents identified ? Gerald Patrick McCann and Kate Healy.
3. Information about whether the profile obtained by the INML corresponds to the profile traced in the English laboratory, on the request of the British authorities.
4. If there are differences between the English and Portuguese profiles that a report should be drawn up for this inquiry.
5. In the follow-up of point 4, we request to be informed whether in the English profile the girl is the daughter of the McCann couple.
6. Other information that might be of use to the investigation.
Signed G. Amaral
And the bewildered response:
09-Processos Vol IX Page 2419
Vol IX Page 2419
Reply from the Forensics Institute (INML) to Goncalo Amaral
22-08-2007
Reply to Queries
- We inform you that none of the samples received by this institute were designated as supposedly belonging to the missing girl and we therefore, cannot reply to this query.
- Samples were studied - hair and a piece of cloth - nuclear DNA profiles only being obtained from 4 samples, which upon comparison with the DNA profiles of Kate and Gerry, could not belong to the girl.
- The samples were then studied using mitochondrial DNA analysis, the same was done for the other samples, giving the results in accordance with our report of 9th July No. 2007/000226 LX-BC.
- As requested in point 5, it was determined that the profile obtained by the British lab could belong to a son/daughter of the McCanns.
- The comparison of the profiles obtained in autossomic STR from Kate and Gerry McCann with the profile obtained was carried out.
Signed
Shortly afterwards it was leaked that Gerry was not Madeleine's father.
Coincidence?
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Or more to the point retained by Goncalo Amaral.
Now if my memory serves me correctly the case was archived on the 21st July 2008. Goncalo Amaral left the PJ on the 1st July 2008 and was removed from the case in October 2007.
The McCanns according to the Daily Record http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/portuguese-police-release-madeleine-mccann-985552 received their copies of the files on the 1st August 2008.
Goncalo's Book was published on the 28th July 2008. Yet in Chapter 11, are sketches of Apartment 5A.
http://frommybigdesk.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Amaral%20The%20Truth%20of%20The%20Lie%20Chapter%2011
Yes from memory you could get a sketch artist to draw the basics, but if you compare those photos to the files, you will see they are a pretty accurate copy of the original photos.
So if the Files were not released to Journalists and given to the McCanns lawyers until after Goncalo's book was printed, how the hell are those drawings so accurate? Could it be that Goncalo Amaral kept a copy of the files? And we know that Lee Rainbow's report was read out in Court, again questioning how did this end up in the hands of Goncalo's lawyer?
Along with Kate's Diary finding its way to CdeM and then onto the News of the World, it does make you question whether Goncalo Amaral kept a copy of the files since leaving the PJ and whether this is ethical or not? And for the life of me, if he was no longer on the case, if he kept a copy of the files, then why was he allowed to?
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Difficult one to answer, TTSOFAFM, since we don't actually know. Perhaps Goncalo Amaral has got a phenomenal memory. Heaven forbid that I should suggest that he nicked some of the written diligences, that then passed by unnoticed because he left such a mess behind.
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Reading the article posted by Carana ( A pact of silence Sol ) I would say there is no question at all that the Portuguese police were leaking information to Cabrita
Whether it was at Amaral's behest is unproven but certainly possible ( likely even )
What strikes me about the article is it's remarkable accuracy ... now that we have the police files we can see that the details presented are largely correct and truthful
So the information the police were leaking was factually accurate.
Why was this accurate information leaked ? ... not for money, I think ... perhaps to counteract the inaccurate misinformation being fed to the press from other sources
Could that be what happened ?
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Very interesting indeed, Icabodcrane. A thread of its own ?
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Reading the article posted by Carana ( A pact of silence Sol ) I would say there is no question at all that the Portuguese police were leaking information to Cabrita
Whether it was at Amaral's behest is unproven but certainly possible ( likely even )
What strikes me about the article is it's remarkable accuracy ... now that we have the police files we can see that the details presented are largely correct and truthful
So the information the police were leaking was factually accurate.
Why was this accurate information leaked ? ... not for money, I think ... perhaps to counteract the inaccurate misinformation being fed to the press from other sources
Could that be what happened ?
Interesting thought. What came first, the chicken or the egg ?
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Interesting thought. What came first, the chicken or the egg ?
The egg of course, Faithlilly ! The Columbus's one.
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Reading the article posted by Carana ( A pact of silence Sol ) I would say there is no question at all that the Portuguese police were leaking information to Cabrita
Whether it was at Amaral's behest is unproven but certainly possible ( likely even )
What strikes me about the article is it's remarkable accuracy ... now that we have the police files we can see that the details presented are largely correct and truthful
So the information the police were leaking was factually accurate.
Why was this accurate information leaked ? ... not for money, I think ... perhaps to counteract the inaccurate misinformation being fed to the press from other sources
Could that be what happened ?
The 'pact of silence' nonsense was simply David Payne saying they couldn't comment on the case because of the Portuguese laws of secrecy.
Nothing else ...
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derailing thread
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Since you seem to know what was on Mr Payne's mind, do you think he knew then of the Gaspar doctors ?
Thread title.
Why was peoples personal information sold/given to the press?
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I erased DCI, erase please in your post.
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The egg of course, Faithlilly ! The Columbus's one.
Such eggspert replies just crack me up.
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The 'pact of silence' nonsense was simply David Payne saying they couldn't comment on the case because of the Portuguese laws of secrecy.
Nothing else ...
I have doubts about that now. Cabrita's article really is remarkably accurate in detail, and that leads me to think the contacts made, by Sol, with the tapas group are equally factual and accurate
Cabrita says that Russell O Brien told them that he did not want to speak to them because he had made a promise to Kate and Gerry who wanted to control all the information coming out ( not because of judicial secrecy )
That sounds like a 'pact' of sorts, to me
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They thought they were lucky "it" didn't happen to them and the least they could do was reserve, discretion. Finally they proved they could be more than acquaintances.
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They thought they were lucky "it" didn't happen to them and the least they could do was reserve, discretion. Finally they proved they could be more than acquaintances.
How do you know that is what they thought?
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They thought they were lucky "it" didn't happen to them and the least they could do was reserve, discretion. Finally they proved they could be more than acquaintances.
How did they prove they could be more than acquaintances, Anne?. And what is your insinuation behind that comment?.
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How do you know that is what they thought?
Sorry, Moustache, IMHO !
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I have doubts about that now. Cabrita's article really is remarkably accurate in detail, and that leads me to think the contacts made, by Sol, with the tapas group are equally factual and accurate
Cabrita says that Russell O Brien told them that he did not want to speak to them because he had made a promise to Kate and Gerry who wanted to control all the information coming out ( not because of judicial secrecy )
That sounds like a 'pact' of sorts, to me
Cabrita says ...
The corroboration of Cabrita's word being what?
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Pact of silence definitely refers to gerry wanting to control everything that went to the media and NOT being under the law of secrecy, why the need for such control, perhaps a control freak
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Pact of silence definitely refers to gerry wanting to control everything that went to the media and NOT being under the law of secrecy, why the need for such control, perhaps a control freak
What "pact of silence"
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Cabrita says ...
The corroboration of Cabrita's word being what?
So much of the detailed information in Cabrita's article can now be verified as entirely accurate and truthful, and I see no reason to doubt it's overall credibility
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What "pact of silence"
The one that was reported about in SOL, besides there was one as evidenced by the tapas's members statements, they all had to go through Gerry Mccann before speakingto the media
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The one that was reported about in SOL, besides there was one as evidenced by the tapas's members statements, they all had to go through Gerry Mccann before speakingto the media
The thread is going off topic again. Feel free to start a new thread on this topic.
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The thread is going off topic again. Feel free to start a new thread on this topic.
You can thank the op and your mates for it though and btw wasnt off topic
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You can thank the op and your mates for it though and btw wasnt off topic
I don't see anything about a pact of silence in the OP - Why was peoples personal information sold/given to the press?
So! off topic yes?
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Another article.
I don't think that this is derailing the thread.
Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears Timesonline
David James Smith
December 16, 2007
stances it would have meant the world to him but, right now, he had other things on his mind.
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id96.html
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I don't see anything about a pact of silence in the OP - Why was peoples personal information sold/given to the press?
So! off topic yes?
Ask carana and chinagirl for derailing it then
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Another article.
I don't think that this is derailing the thread.
Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears Timesonline
David James Smith
December 16, 2007
stances it would have meant the world to him but, right now, he had other things on his mind.
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id96.html
biased journos with vested interests or ones tood what to write are quite the anathema at best, the very pits at worst, poor bloke
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biased journos with vested interests or ones tood what to write are quite the anathema at best, the very pits at worst, poor bloke
Sorry, what does this mean?
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So much of the detailed information in Cabrita's article can now be verified as entirely accurate and truthful, and I see no reason to doubt it's overall credibility
so Why was peoples personal information sold/given to the press?
A lot of people seem to agree that it didn't come the the tapas lot.
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Sorry, spello, tood equals told
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Reading the article posted by Carana ( A pact of silence Sol ) I would say there is no question at all that the Portuguese police were leaking information to Cabrita
Whether it was at Amaral's behest is unproven but certainly possible ( likely even )
What strikes me about the article is it's remarkable accuracy ... now that we have the police files we can see that the details presented are largely correct and truthful
So the information the police were leaking was factually accurate.
Why was this accurate information leaked ? ... not for money, I think ... perhaps to counteract the inaccurate misinformation being fed to the press from other sources
Could that be what happened ?
you say "not for money"
a journalist getting private information that gave her a scoop every time and it wasn't for money?
who are you suggesting was feeding misinformation to the press?
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Ask carana and chinagirl for derailing it then
Don't worry I have reported them too.
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The original question was WHY
- The press in both countries playing at virtual rugby? If so, why? Retaliating against mutual xenophobia? Or quite simply money?
Perhaps not the only factor:
- An opportunity to make people crack that didn't involve slippery stairs?
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Don't worry I have reported them too.
dont make assumptions or cast aspersions night dear
8**8:/:
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dont make assumptions or cast aspersions night dear
8**8:/:
Is this where you say night night but keep returning like acid reflux.
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The original question was WHY
- The press in both countries playing at virtual rugby? If so, why? Retaliating against mutual xenophobia? Or quite simply money?
Perhaps not the only factor:
- An opportunity to make people crack that didn't involve slippery stairs?
The vicious character assassination in the press certainly turned the public against the McCanns and their friends IMO. It was virtually 'trial by media,' whilst the victims were unable to defend themselves because of the secrecy laws.
Personally I think they were being hounded via the Press to encourage them to leave Portugal - and to take the UK police with them - but that is just my opinion.
As a matter of curiosity and sorry if it's slightly off topic - but was Leonor Cipriani crucified in the press in the same way before she even went to trial?
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Is this where you say night night but keep returning like acid reflux.
aww diddums so sorry made another post to ferryman, couldnt help it, now i am off so u can rest assured I wont be embarrassing you and some of your mates by rubbishhg your straw clutching posts
8((()*/
Sleep tight dont let the lies bite
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The vicious character assassination in the press certainly turned the public against the McCanns and their friends IMO. It was virtually 'trial by media,' whilst the victims were unable to defend themselves because of the secrecy laws.
Personally I think they were being hounded via the Press to encourage them to leave Portugal - and to take the UK police with them - but that is just my opinion.
As a matter of curiosity and sorry if it's slightly off topic - but was Leonor Cipriani crucified in the press in the same way before she even went to trial?
From the little I've been able to find - yes, apparently. That case was before some media had adopted online sites, but the media onslaught seems to have been quite vocal.
I still haven't found the original files of that case online.
There's a thread on that case somewhere on this forum.
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From the little I've been able to find - yes, apparently. That case was before some media had adopted online sites, but the media onslaught seems to have been quite vocal.
I still haven't found the original files of that case online.
There's a thread on that case somewhere on this forum.
Thankyou Carana - I was wondering whether PJ leaks to the press was a common practice - deliberately done to influence public perception. A nasty abuse of power if that is the case.
IMO the Portuguese authorities should either dispense with their secrecy laws or take action against those who break them. The former would probably be the easiest option, and then at least there would be a level playing field.
I believe it was from talking to a Portuguese journalist about the McCann case that led to Amaral's eventual demise. So there can be no doubt that he was personally flouting the secrecy law.
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It was virtually 'trial by media,' whilst the victims were unable to defend themselves because of the secrecy laws.
What secrecy laws ? Didn't Mrs Tanner describe in details her sighting in BBC Panorama broadcast in November 2007? And what about Mr Mitchell ?
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The vicious character assassination in the press certainly turned the public against the McCanns and their friends IMO. It was virtually 'trial by media,' whilst the victims were unable to defend themselves because of the secrecy laws.
Personally I think they were being hounded via the Press to encourage them to leave Portugal - and to take the UK police with them - but that is just my opinion.
As a matter of curiosity and sorry if it's slightly off topic - but was Leonor Cipriani crucified in the press in the same way before she even went to trial?
I think the public were against the McCanns from the time they realised they had left three under fours alone to go out to dinner.
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Do you deny that the McCann's were unable to discuss the disapperance of Madeleine because of the secrecy laws
in Portugal?
David James Smith of 'Beyond the Smears' fame has admitted he had been briefed by Gerry during the writing of that article, while judicial secrecy was still in place.
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I think the public were against the McCanns...
Which segment of the public?
And how many of those came to their senses when they realised what a calumny had been perpetrated against the McCanns?
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I think the public were against the McCanns from the time they realised they had left three under fours alone to go out to dinner.
Probably if they were unaware of the Baby Listening Service that existed in many holiday resorts both in Portugal and elsewhere, which was signed up to by thousands of parents (and still is), and mirrored by the McCanns and their friends in PdL.
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I guess the riposte to the point about the number of people who have signed the McCanns' petition is that the number is still small by comparison with the number in the population.
It is.
But how does that number compare with any number to have signed anti McCann petitions?
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What 'public' would that be given the huge support on their Facebook site, not to mention the petitions to review the missing of Madeleine?
Benice posted 'The vicious character assassination in the press certainly turned the public against the McCanns and their friends IMO. '
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We all know the answer to that ferryman.
The anti McCann petitions were abysmal.
And not just in the absence of support for them ...
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I guess the riposte to the point about the number of people who have signed the McCanns' petition is that the number is still small by comparison with the number in the population.
It is.
But how does that number compare with any number to have signed anti McCann petitions?
Publicity is the major factor in number differences.
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Benice posted 'The vicious character assassination in the press certainly turned the public against the McCanns and their friends IMO. '
I was referring to the Portuguese public - although I do believe the lies in the Portuguese Press which were then repeated in the UK pres did have some influence on the UK public, but not to the same degree as in Portugal. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
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I was referring to the Portuguese public - although I do believe the lies in the Portuguese Press which were then repeated in the UK pres did have some influence on the UK public, but not to the same degree as in Portugal. Sorry if I didn't make that clear.
Benice, you might be interested by this up to now only abduction corroborated (and strangulation) of a young British girl in the Algarve by a British guy or her British step-father (?). The case was judged alongside by British residents and story told by a British journalist who blamed, guess who ? "The Porkies" as he must have a kick calling them repeatedly.
Nick Davies, author of best selling book Flat Earth News where he criticizes tabloids but does exactly what they do.
http://www.nickdavies.net/1993/08/01/kidnap-murder-and-justice-in-the-algarve/
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Benice, you might be interested by this up to now only abduction corroborated (and strangulation) of a young British girl in the Algarve by a British guy or her British step-father (?). The case was judged alongside by British residents and story told by a British journalist who blamed, guess who ? "The Porkies" as he must have a kick calling them repeatedly.
Nick Davies, author of best selling book Flat Earth News where he criticizes tabloids but does exactly what they do.
http://www.nickdavies.net/1993/08/01/kidnap-murder-and-justice-in-the-algarve/
An interesting article.
On the "Porkie" issue, I don't read that as Nick Davies himself referring to the Portuguese as such, but reflecting the term used by the Vale Navio Brits when describing the situation from their perspective. He doesn't use that term elsewhere in the article when writing about other aspects of the case.
Try imagining that it was a serious Portuguese journalist describing a similar situation in the UK and when reflecting the perspective of the local Portuguese community concerning Brits, referred to them as "Bifes", but did not use the term when explaining other aspects of the case.
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An interesting article.
On the "Porkie" issue, I don't read that as Nick Davies himself referring to the Portuguese as such, but reflecting the term used by the Vale Navio Brits when describing the situation from their perspective. He doesn't use that term elsewhere in the article when writing about other aspects of the case.
Try imagining that it was a serious Portuguese journalist describing a similar situation in the UK and when reflecting the perspective of the local Portuguese community concerning Brits, referred to them as "Bifes", but did not use the term when explaining other aspects of the case.
He uses the word thrice at least (once as a quotation would have been enough), he mentions also Portuguese gangsters without reference at all, frustrating. This article isn't sourced at all, it looks absolutely "tabloid" style and the general tone is unpleasant.
I thought "it could be me", and sent it to a French friend of mine, very fluent in English, and she was shocked. In France such an article in Le Monde, Libération, l'Express, le Nouvel Observateur is unthinkable.
If you can find in the Diário de Noticias or in Publico an article by a Portuguese best selling (well known) author story telling how Portugueses in a community in the UK made their own investigation on an internal case of abduction and murder, taping even a suspect on his deathbed because the "Bifes", those incompetents and corrupted framed the wrong guy, if you can find something close to that, Carana, please send the link.
But my point in fact is there are in the Algarve some British people who behave extraordinarily, on the basis the country host is "out law", being corrupted etc. and that this justifies their making the law, their law.
I think this mentality enlightens the McCann case.
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Interesting snippets, in that article.
Sound familiar.
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.
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?”
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;
...
Carana posted it in full in April. Sadie also posted the torture documents regarding Mr. Michael Cook. Not pleasant reading.
http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=1354.0
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He uses the word thrice at least (once as a quotation would have been enough), he mentions also Portuguese gangsters without reference at all, frustrating. This article isn't sourced at all, it looks absolutely "tabloid" style and the general tone is unpleasant.
I thought "it could be me", and sent it to a French friend of mine, very fluent in English, and she was shocked. In France such an article in Le Monde, Libération, l'Express, le Nouvel Observateur is unthinkable.
If you can find in the Diário de Noticias or in Publico an article by a Portuguese best selling (well known) author story telling how Portugueses in a community in the UK made their own investigation on an internal case of abduction and murder, taping even a suspect on his deathbed because the "Bifes", those incompetents and corrupted framed the wrong guy, if you can find something close to that, Carana, please send the link.
But my point in fact is there are in the Algarve some British people who behave extraordinarily, on the basis the country host is "out law", being corrupted etc. and that this justifies their making the law, their law.
I think this mentality enlightens the McCann case.
In context, I understand the use of the term as a way of conveying a sense of how a certain type of ex-pat views the nationals of the host country. It doesn't mean that he, Nick Davies, shares it.
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@ DCI
I did have a feeling that I'd posted the article some time ago.
Thanks for that and for finding the thread.
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@ DCI
I did have a feeling that I'd posted the article some time ago.
Thanks for that and for finding the thread.
You are welocome.
I also believe Eleanor has posted loads of info, on Micheal Cook's torture, some time ago.
Perhaps Admin will open a new thread for this, as its off topic, on this one.
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Interesting snippets, in that article.
Carana posted it in full in April. Sadie also posted the torture documents regarding Mr. Michael Cook. Not pleasant reading.
Not pleasant at all. When Carana posted it, I didn't read it. A thread assuming one more time without a shadow of a doubt (amazing !) nor a shadow of a proof (also amazing !) the P... are .... requires imperatively to be passed by.
As the British suspect of the British died in 1992 without confessing on his death bed, the British suspect of the Portugueses had no alternative but to undermine the investigation. Fair enough. But the interesting point wasn't Sadie's objective unfortunately. And this thread doesn't even say which appeals were done and what resulted of it.
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Carana, in order to equilibrate perspectives, unless any torture, corruption, incompetence, accusation against the Portuguese police risks to be discarded according to the principle that too many accusations kills accusation, as you are so well informed, please send a link showing that muckrakering abroad and in the EU isn't a privilege of British journalists (excluding the Tabloids) like Mr Davies.
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Carana, in order to equilibrate perspectives, unless any torture, corruption, incompetence, accusation against the Portuguese police risks to be discarded according to the principle that too many accusations kills accusation, as you are so well informed, please send a link showing that muckrakering abroad and in the EU isn't a privilege of British journalists (excluding the Tabloids) like Mr Davies.
Although I know your post was in reply to Carana, I am somewhat bemused by it. For us not so quick off the mark types, could you please explain. Thanks.
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Carana, in order to equilibrate perspectives, unless any torture, corruption, incompetence, accusation against the Portuguese police risks to be discarded according to the principle that too many accusations kills accusation, as you are so well informed, please send a link showing that muckrakering abroad and in the EU isn't a privilege of British journalists (excluding the Tabloids) like Mr Davies.
We're talking at cross-purposes. My comment was about the impression that I had that you thought that Nick Davies was himself describing the Portuguese as "Porkies". As far as I can tell, he wasn't.
In context, the use of the term (IMO) is totally different to, e.g., Tony Parsons and his "sardine" comments - which I found objectionable and unhelpful.
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I reckon that manichaeism, in its colloquial meaning of simplistic dualism without nuances, ruins debates. It's an easy temptation that should be avoided, not for moral reasons but because it is unproductive.
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I reckon that manichaeism, in its colloquial meaning of simplistic dualism without nuances, ruins debates. It's an easy temptation that should be avoided, not for moral reasons but because it is unproductive.
Okay, it must be because it's the weekend, but what has an ancient religious heresy got to do with porkies etc?
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We're talking at cross-purposes. My comment was about the impression that I had that you thought that Nick Davies was himself describing the Portuguese as "Porkies". As far as I can tell, he wasn't.
In context, the use of the term (IMO) is totally different to, e.g., Tony Parsons and his "sardine" comments - which I found objectionable and unhelpful.
I repeat that once was enough. Twice calls to mind, especially if the general tone is assumptive.
Out of curiosity, Carana, is there a positive word for "unhelpful", or has "helpful" no antonym ?
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got to do with porkies etc?
Don't expect me to react with some supposed Portuguese equivalent Carana revealed me..
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Kate and Gerry McCann: Beyond the smears Timesonline
David James Smith
December 16, 2007
For six months David James Smith has examined the evidence surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann for The Sunday Times Magazine. In this, the most comprehensive — and authoritative — investigation yet, he addresses the key issues facing Gerry and Kate as they prepare for Christmas without their daughter
That week in Praia da Luz, the week the McCanns were made suspects in their own daughter's "death", I was out there talking to them and to family and friends. I was at the home of the Anglican vicar Haynes Hubbard, sitting with him and his wife, Susan, while their own three children pottered around us. The Hubbards had flown in from Canada three days after Madeleine’s disappearance to begin Haynes’s tour of duty as the vicar of Praia da Luz. They had heard about Madeleine for the first time while changing planes at Lisbon airport, in a slightly unnerving encounter with an elderly Portuguese woman who had seized Susan’s arm and told her to "hold on" to the baby she was carrying, as a child had been taken.
The Hubbards had spent their first days at the resort fearing for their own children's safety. Gradually they became friends with the McCanns, particularly Susan and Kate, drawn together at first perhaps by the McCanns' need to find some comfort in religion. But mostly in Portugal the McCanns were enveloped by family and friends from the UK.
The McCanns were flying home that Sunday and had been to a farewell dinner that week at the Hubbards'. Susan told me that she and Kate had discussed how much one person could cope with. Kate seemed close to the limits of human endurance. Haynes chimed in: "And I don’t think she’s looking forward to tomorrow very much either." The thought was left hanging there: how much can one person take?
Kate was to go to the nearby town of Portimao the next day, Thursday, September 6, to be questioned by detectives from the Policia Judiciaria (PJ). It would be Gerry's turn the day after. For the media this would be a shocking new twist to the story – but not for the McCanns: the PJ had told them four weeks earlier they were going to be subjected to formal interviews and the McCanns had stayed on, instead of going home at the end of August as originally planned, waiting for the interviews to take place. Waiting. Waiting.
Finally, the PJ called. They told the McCanns they would be made official suspects – arguidos. The McCanns had noted the change of mood in Portugal, especially among the PJ, and the increasing viciousness of the Portuguese press. Some of the stories seemed so incredible and far-fetched – Kate, for instance, disposing of Madeleine’s body, or Madeleine’s DNA being found in the car the McCanns had hired three weeks after Madeleine disappeared – that I at first assumed they were the fanciful inventions of an unfettered press. I soon realised how well they reflected the thinking of the PJ. More recently I have discovered the stories were being fed to the press by the PJ, from the highest ranks. So much for judicial secrecy. One Portuguese journalist told me that segredo de justica – secrecy of justice – was like the speed limit. Everyone knows the law; nobody keeps to it.
It seems important to make it clear right away that I do not suspect the McCanns harmed Madeleine, nor do I think they disposed of their daughter’s body if, as the PJ believe, she died in an accident that night in their apartment.
This is not a mere prejudice on my part. I have spent a long time considering and examining every unpleasant scenario. The McCanns are not my friends and I have no axe to grind with Portugal, its police or its media.
To me, the McCanns are genuine people in the grip of despair – the accusations against them are ludicrous and a cruel distraction from the search for their daughter. That’s why I put the quotation marks around the word "death" at the top of the article. Madeleine may be dead, it may even be more likely she is dead, but nobody knows for sure. Nobody, not even the PJ, as we will see, can produce any persuasive evidence that she has come to harm.
That evening, Thursday, May 3, at just after 8pm, by their account, Kate and Gerry McCann were having a glass of wine together in apartment 5a on the ground floor of Block 5 of the Waterside Village Gardens at the Ocean Club. Their three children were asleep in the front bedroom overlooking the car park and, beyond it, the street. Madeleine was in the single bed nearest the door. There was an empty bed against the opposite wall, beneath the window. Between the two beds were two travel cots containing the twins: Sean and Amelie. Gerry had bought the wine at the Baptista supermarket, 200 yards down the hill. They had lived and worked in New Zealand for a year and that particular bottle, Montana sauvignon blanc, was their favourite. It was the sixth day of their week’s holiday in the Algarve and they were reflecting on the enjoyable time they’d had, how surprisingly easy it had been with the children.
When their old friend Dave Payne had invited them on a group holiday, it had seemed too good to resist. Dave and Fiona Payne had been on another Mark Warner holiday the year before, to Greece with Matt and Rachael Oldfield. The Algarve group would be completed by Russell O’Brien, Jane Tanner and Fiona’s mother, Dianne Webster. Six of the group were doctors. Gerry was a consultant cardiologist and had worked before with Matt and Russell. Kate had been an anaesthetist and was now a part-time GP.
The group first spent time together at Dave and Fiona’s wedding in Italy in 2003. Now they had eight children between them. Madeleine was the oldest, her fourth birthday a week after they would return from the Algarve. One of the attractions was that there were children for their own to play with. And the adults were a sporty group, a speciality of Mark Warner holidays; tennis had dominated the activities that week.
That might all sound very cosy and middle class, but that did not mean their lives had been easy or free of suffering – especially with the struggle to have children, eventually managed through IVF – or that they had been born into an advantaged world. Kate came from a modest Liverpool background and Gerry, the youngest of five, had been brought up in a tenement building on the south side of Glasgow.
The terms of the holiday were half-board, breakfast and evening meal, and the McCanns paid about £1,500. There had been some reduction when they had discovered that, unlike most Mark Warner resorts, the Ocean Club did not offer a baby-listening service. Instead, the group had asked for apartments close together, so they were all assigned to Block 5. The Paynes were on the floor above, the only couple with a functioning baby monitor. Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner had brought a monitor too, but theirs wasn’t getting much of a signal from the Tapas restaurant 50 yards away.
The Ocean Club was not a gated, enclosed resort in the usual style of Mark Warner, but a sprawling complex open to the village of Luz and scattered over such a wide distance that shuttle buses were used.
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Even though the resort was open to the village, it felt safe and secure, and in early May it was still very quiet. Gerry never saw a soul, except once, on the last night, on his evening checks, going back and forth between Tapas and the apartment, an even-paced walk of just under a minute.
As the McCanns endlessly repeated afterwards, if they had thought it was wrong or even risky, they would never have left their children. With hindsight, of course, they would never have done it and now they are riven with guilt, but we can all be wise after the event, and so many of us have taken similar chances at times, in search of a bit of respite from our children.
Gerry had knocked up at the start of the 4.30pm tennis-drills session, but had decided not to exacerbate an injury to his Achilles tendon, so had dropped out and waited around by the courts until the children came back from the kids’ clubs at 5pm for tea. That had been one of the most enjoyable times of the holiday, all the children together for tea, then the adults playing with them afterwards.
Gerry was in his apartment at 7pm, had a glass of water, then a beer, while the children sat with Kate on the couch having stories with a snack. The children were clearly shattered – the last thing any of them needed was a sedative and, anyway, it was not something the McCanns ever did. They put them to bed after a last story. The twins were asleep virtually the moment they lay down, Madeleine not far behind them.
These days it was rare for Madeleine to wake up at all once she was in bed. If she did, she’d normally wander into her parents’ bed, whether they were there or not. At home in Rothley, sometime earlier, they had begun a star chart for Madeleine staying in her own bed. The chart, still on display in the kitchen, was full of stars. At about 7.30pm, Kate and Gerry showered and changed and sat down to have a quiet glass of the sauvignon blanc. They were first to the table at the restaurant at 8.35 and spent some minutes talking to a couple from Hertfordshire – two more tennis players – at the next table, who were eating with their young children. As they chatted, Gerry thought how lucky he was, his children asleep nearby, he and Kate free to come and enjoy some adult time at the restaurant and not have to sit with their children, as this couple were.
The McCanns sat down after a few minutes and then ordered some wine. The Oldfields were next to arrive, then Russell O’Brien and Jane Tanner and, finally, always last, Dave and Fiona Payne with Dianne Webster.
That night their group ordered six bottles in total and two were still untouched on the table at 10pm. No more than half a bottle of wine each. The Portuguese magazine Sol reported that the group had drunk 14 bottles. Another Portuguese journalist told me a local GNR (national republican guard) police officer had described one of the group as being so drunk later that evening, they could barely stand.
They had just ordered starters when the routine of checking began. Matt Oldfield went first at 8.55 to check his own apartment and to hurry up the Paynes, who had still not arrived.
He was followed by Gerry, who entered his apartment at about 9.05 through the patio doors to the lounge. Earlier that week the McCanns had used a key to go in through the front door next to the children’s bedroom but, worrying the noise might wake the children, they began using the patio doors, leaving them unlocked.
When he entered the apartment, Gerry immediately saw that the children’s bedroom door, which they always left just ajar, was now open to 45 degrees. He thought that was odd, and glanced in his own bedroom to see if Madeleine had gone into her parents’ bed. But no, she and the twins were all still fast asleep.
Gerry paused over Madeleine, who – a typical doctor’s observation, this – was lying almost in “the recovery position” with Cuddle Cat, the toy her godfather, John Corner, had bought her, and her comfort blanket up near her head, and Gerry thought how gorgeous, how lovely-looking she was and how lucky he was. Putting the door back to five degrees, he went to the loo and left to return to the restaurant. That, of course, was the last time he would see his daughter.
As he walked down the hill, Gerry saw Jes Wilkins on the opposite side of the road pushing a child in a buggy. Gerry called hello and crossed over to talk. Wilkins and his partner were eating in their own apartment that night, but their youngest still wouldn’t settle. It reminded Gerry of the fraught time he and Kate used to have with Madeleine when she was a baby. In his memory, they could never eat a meal together when they went out, as she was always disturbing them and needing to be wheeled off to sleep.
As Jane Tanner walked up the hill, she saw Gerry talking to Jes and, as she passed them, she saw ahead of her a man walking quickly across the top of the road in front of her, going away from the apartment block, heading to the outer road of the resort complex. The man was carrying a little girl who was hanging limply from his open arms. The sighting was odd, but hardly exceptional in a holiday resort.
Her daughter fine, Jane returned to the table. At 9.30, Kate got up to make the next check on her children, but Matt Oldfield was checking too, as was Russell O’Brien, and Matt offered to do Kate’s check for her, which she accepted. Gerry teased that she would not be excused her turn at the next check.
In the McCanns’ apartment, Oldfield noticed the children’s bedroom door was again open, but that meant nothing to him, so he merely observed all was quiet and made a cursory glance inside the room, seeing the twins in their cots but, agonisingly, not directly seeing Madeleine’s bed from the angle at which he stood. Afterwards, he could not say for sure if she had been there or not. Nor could he say if the window and shutter had been open.
He would get a hard time from the police because of this, during his interviews not long afterwards, being aggressively accused of taking Madeleine – you passed her out of the window, didn’t you! – being suspected because he had offered to take Kate’s turn.
Jane Tanner, too, would be accused of fabricating or misremembering her sighting of this stranger with a child. There could be no answer to such an accusation – except that she was an ordinary, honest person who knew what she had seen. Sometime after 10pm, Rachael Oldfield would go to Jane’s apartment to tell her Madeleine had been taken and Jane would say: “Oh my God. I saw a man carrying a girl.”
It perhaps needs to be stated openly that all these timings and details, the way in which they weave and dovetail together, are based on witness accounts – corroborated not just by the McCann group but by others, such as Jes Wilkins – and that, despite suggestions to the contrary, there are no obvious contradictions or differences between them. Nor has any of the McCann group, at any time since, said they wanted to retract or change their statement.
That suggestion too is a lie.
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Russell O’Brien checked his own daughter at 9.30 and found she had been sick. Jane returned to the apartment to be with her daughter, and Russell went back to the table. Russell would later fall under suspicion too, because of those few minutes he spent away from the table.
Finally, at 10pm, it was Kate’s turn to check the apartment. She only became alarmed when she reached out to the children’s bedroom door and it blew shut. Inside the room the window was open, the shutter was up and Madeleine’s bed was empty. Kate quickly searched everywhere and ran back down the hill and into the restaurant: “Madeleine’s gone, somebody’s taken her” or “Madeleine’s gone, someone’s taken her.”
Gerry stood up. “She can’t be gone.” “I’m telling you she’s gone, someone’s taken her.”
It was reported that Kate had said “They’ve taken her,” as if it was someone that she knew. She did use those words, but only later, back in the apartment, in her despair, as she said: “We’ve let her down. They’ve taken her.”
Matt went down to the 24-hour reception at the bottom of the hill to raise the alarm. The call to the police went in at 10.15. They arrived 55 minutes later. It is widely believed among the Portuguese media, and perhaps the police too, even now, that the McCanns called Sky News before they called the police. For the record, Sky News picked up the story from GMTV breakfast television, at around 7.30am the following day.
There was a latch lock on the sliding glass window, and the McCanns thought, but could not be sure, that they had locked it at the start of the holiday. They would later discover it was common for cleaners to open the shutters and windows to give the rooms an airing, so there was no way of knowing whether the window was locked that night or not and no forensic trace to indicate where and how an abductor had gone in and out. They could easily have used the front door, perhaps even had access to a key.
In the McCanns’ minds now, there is no doubt Jane Tanner saw their daughter being taken, but there was so little time to talk in the first few days that it was not until Jane saw the description of Madeleine’s pyjamas in the media, around Monday or Tuesday of the following week, that she told them the little girl she had seen was wearing the same design: pink top and white bottoms with a floral design.
While searches began, Gerry was worried about Kate, as she was so distraught and kept talking about paedophiles, saying Madeleine would be dead. He tried to be reassuring, but of course he was thinking the same things.
It all came pouring out of him at 23.40 – from his phone records – when he called his sister Trish in Scotland ranting and raving semi-coherently on the phone about Madeleine being taken, and Trish kept trying to get him to calm down. A sharp contrast with the way he would be later, particularly in public, once he had regained his self-control.
The detectives from PJ arrived at about 1am. By 3.30am they had gone and there was no police action at all, or none visible to the McCanns.
Four times that night they put in calls via the British consul; four times the message came back from the PJ, a message that the McCanns would never forget: “Everything that can be done is being done.”
One of the PJ officers had put on surgical gloves and begun trying to dust down the bedroom, but his powder was not working properly. He tried to take the McCanns’ fingerprints for elimination, but that didn’t work either. It all had to be done again the next day.
The twins slept on like logs, just as they always did at home, though even their parents were fleetingly worried – had they been sedated by an abductor? – that they should be quite so comatose. The Ocean Club gave them another apartment, but the McCanns did not want to be alone, so the twins were taken to the Paynes’ apartment, and Kate and Gerry went there later too, to try to rest.
They got up at first light and went to search alone on the open scrubland beyond the resort, wandering around, calling Madeleine’s name. It was cold and lonely – there was no answer.
Gerry had asked the departing PJ detectives at half three about contacting the media to make an appeal. One of the officers had reacted with surprising agitation, waving his hand emphatically: “No journalists! No journalists!” That, of course, was not quite how it worked out.
For many weeks, the McCanns enjoyed a good relationship with the Portuguese police and were treated to regular updates and a flow of information via the family-liaison officers sent out by Leicestershire police. The problem with the three Leicester officers was that they didn’t have a word of Portuguese between them.
The first public indication of police thinking came at the end of June when the magazine Sol published a story about the McCann group, casting doubts on their evidence and claiming they had undertaken a pact of silence. It was the first time the McCanns’ friends had been named in public, but Sol’s journalist Felicia Cabrita had their names and phone numbers and details from their witness statements. She had called them all, and at least one other witness, Jes Wilkins.
The information had been handed to Cabrita by the police – she says she acquired the material through good journalism, which in a sense it was – and her source is widely believed by her colleagues to have been the former head of the inquiry, Goncalo Amaral.
The PJ appointed an official spokesman, Olegario Sousa. He was apparently plucked from his day job – he was a chief inspector on the art-robbery squad – because he was the only one who spoke decent English. He was never directly involved in the investigation and was rarely told much of what was really going on.
Initial suspicion focused on Robert Murat, who made himself busy with police and journalists from the first day, offering his services as an interpreter, as he spoke both languages and lived across the road from the Ocean Club with his mother at the villa Casa Liliana. In fact, the man Jane Tanner had seen carrying a child was walking straight towards the Murat villa.
Murat later said to me that he told the PJ the press were suspicious of him, and they told him not to worry and to keep away from the press and work for them instead. He had signed papers to become an official interpreter and even sat in during the witness interview of Rachael Oldfield.
Leaving the police station in Portimao one evening, a week after becoming an official police interpreter, Murat became aware he was being followed. Shortly after that he was arrested and interviewed himself and made an arguido.
Murat always denied he was out the night Madeleine disappeared, but three of the McCann group claimed at the time they had seen him and still insist they were right. I was told there was at least one new independent sighting of Murat out on the night of May 3.
Bizarrely, the McCanns believe they were inadvertently responsible for encouraging the PJ to take them seriously as potential suspects, as it was them bringing in a South African “body finder”, Danie Krugel, that led to search dogs being used. The PJ agreed to work with Krugel, and an officer from the UK National Policing Improvement Agency was called in to advise on a search based on Krugel’s findings. It was agreed the British would supply some specialist equipment for spotting disturbed soil and also some search dogs, including one trained in human-remains detection (HRD) and one trained to detect the scent of blood.
Ultimately, only those who were there and involved know exactly what happened, but the McCanns wonder just how the search dogs were presented to the PJ and what claims were made for their success rate and infallibility.
All British policing techniques are meant to be practised uniformly by every force across the country and defined in written policy created by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). But the ACPO was unable to produce for me any policy relating to search dogs.
Gerry was initially optimistic at the prospect of the searches by these supposedly elite British dogs and techniques. The dogs then went on to search the apartments of the McCanns and their friends. A line-up of cars were also called in by the police, including the cars owned or used by Murat and the Renault the McCanns had been using, which they had hired on May 27.
Those who told me about the dogs’ searches say they involved little objective science. It has been suggested that the HRD dog was treated differently in the McCanns’ apartment than in the others. The dog kept sniffing and running off and it was called back on several occasions. Eventually it “alerted”, meaning it went stiff and stayed still.
Then the blood dog was called in and directed to the area where the other dog had alerted. Eventually this dog alerted in the same place – behind the sofa in the lounge, which is where the trace of blood was supposedly found.
The cars were lined up, not in a controlled environment, but in the underground public car park opposite Portimao police station. Again the dog was led quickly from one car to the next until he reached a Renault with “Find Madeleine” stickers all over it. The dog sniffed and moved on to the next car, but was called back. The dog was taken around the McCanns’ car for about a minute, as opposed to the few seconds devoted to the other cars. Then the dog went rigid, an “alert”, and the doors and the boot were opened. It was this that led to the recovery of some body fluids that the PJ suspected would contain traces of Madeleine’s DNA, and which led to the supposed revelation that her body must have been carried in the car.
The role of such dogs is normally intended to find a body or remains. Without any subsequent discovery the alerts amount to little more than an indication – or worse: in one recent case in Wisconsin a judge concluded that similarly trained dogs were “no more reliable than the flip of a coin”, after hearing evidence that they were wrong far more often than they were right. The McCanns’ lawyers are in touch with the defence lawyers in that case. The PJ had never attempted to obtain a “control sample” of Madeleine’s DNA. That had been left to the McCanns, who had found traces of her saliva on the pillow of her bed at home in Rothley and provided that DNA sample to the Portuguese police.
Whatever the public’s perception – based on a slew of news stories – at this stage there is no published evidence that Madeleine’s DNA, or any trace of her blood, has been recovered from the apartment or the car. Any suggestion to the contrary appears to be misinformation from the PJ. Some Portuguese journalists and, apparently, some members of the PJ believed the UK’s Forensic Science Service (FSS), based in Birmingham, had been deliberately delaying the tests. There are some who suspect the involvement of the British secret services.
In fact, both the PJ’s national director, Alipio Ribeiro, and another PJ official, Carlos Anjos, have both said openly that the police have failed to establish a perfect match. The PJ found several specks of what they believe to be blood in apartment 5a, including one sample that someone had apparently tried to wash off.
They found a trace of body fluid – that is, not blood – in the boot of the Renault and a tiny trace of blood in the Renault’s key fob. Some forensic tests were carried out at the PJ’s own laboratories in Lisbon, where tests on samples related to Robert Murat were also made. The tests on the traces that were potentially the most significant came to the FSS. One sample was said to have produced DNA that was similar to Madeleine’s. An exact match would be 20 out of 20 bands, this sample was said to be similar in 15 out of 20 bands. But in reality, that result was meaningless, as any family member could produce the same match.
Some journalists were told that more advanced tests were being carried out on the smallest blood traces – tests called low copy number profiling, which could produce DNA findings in the slightest of samples. They were a slow process, but did not normally take more than two weeks.
In late November, PJ officers and forensic experts came to meet police and FSS experts in the UK, amid claims the PJ were still waiting for further results. Leicestershire police have apparently paid for all the forensic tests being carried out in the case by the FSS – they are the client in the case, not the Portuguese. The PJ have used this as evidence that the British are suspicious of the McCanns too – even the McCanns think the British police doubted them for a while, until the forensic results emerged – but you might think the PJ would have wanted to be in control of their own forensic findings.
I heard that a PJ officer had been surprised to find a member of MI5 at a UK meeting about the case, and this made him suspicious that shadowy forces could be at work. The Sol journalist Felicia Cabrita mentioned the “mysterious Clarence” – Clarence Mitchell, the former government PR officer turned McCann spokesman – and I was told there was suspicion too about another government official, Sheree Dodd, who had acted as a PR officer for the McCanns briefly in the early days – had she come out from MI6 to help dispose of the body?
These theories might seem preposterous, but for those involved in the case in Portugal, they fitted a pattern in which the Portuguese government and in turn the PJ had felt the heavy weight of diplomatic pressure from the UK – a pressure that the police and the journalists very much resented, with its implication that the police were not doing their job properly. This could be one reason why the PJ were so ready to suspect the McCanns.
There seemed to be no doubt that the PJ really did think the McCanns had done it. I was outlined a scenario in which Kate had come back to the apartment and found that Madeleine had fallen from the sofa and hit her head – hence the blood – and cleaned up and hid the body somewhere in the apartment, and perhaps had not even told Gerry until the next day.
The police could not answer all the questions, of course. They were almost as unanswerable as they were unimaginable. Where would they have hidden the body? How would they have got it into the car 24 days later, and where would they have taken it? What kind of people would they have to be – what borderline personality disorders must they both share – to keep that to themselves for six months, maintain a facade in front of everyone they knew, and at the same time not hiding away but going out to ask the world to help find Madeleine?
I know the McCanns believe the PJ were oversold the value of the dogs. It was after the dogs came out that the PJ’s attitude towards the McCanns changed and it became harder for the McCanns to obtain a briefing meeting. They were disturbed when the press began reporting that the PJ knew Madeleine was dead. Finally, after pressing for a meeting, one was arranged for Wednesday, August 8, three days before the 100-day point after Madeleine’s disappearance.
When they arrived at the station in Portimao the couple were separated and both interrogated. Kate especially was given “the third degree”. Gerry broke down and cried, pleading with the PJ to share any evidence that Madeleine was dead. “It’s coming, it’s coming,” he was told.
The interviews caused the couple “incredible emotional distress”. But they agreed, if they had been guilty, they probably would have cracked and confessed at that point. The police said there would be no more briefings. The next time they saw the McCanns it would be across the table, for formal interviews.
What was doubly dispiriting, of course, was that while the PJ treated them as suspects, they were no longer looking for Madeleine. I was told the PJ had “abandoned the abduction theory”. It was open season now on the McCanns. The publicity was wretched.
The British press were not blameless either, often lazily repeating allegations and sometimes repeating them despite emphatic denials from the McCann camp. If you read the blog sites on the internet you would discover an even darker, nastier tone. The McCanns and their holiday friends were swingers, apparently. That allegation was even made on the Portuguese equivalent of the BBC by a former PJ detective, Jose Barra da Costa. When I checked with him, he said he had been told by a friend in the UK who happened to be a police officer. No doubt that officer had plucked it from the internet. It is not true.
During Kate’s interviews with the PJ in September, just before she was declared an arguido, she was separated from her lawyer, and he was presented with a long list of factors pointing to her guilt, including entries from her entirely innocuous diary and a passage they believed she had marked in a Bible (which in fact had been given to her and marked by the original owner).
The PJ also told the lawyer there was a 100% DNA match with Madeleine in the car and showed him a document that appeared to prove it. Possibly, this was the document showing Madeleine’s control sample of DNA. The McCanns feared even their own lawyer thought they were guilty. Kate was asked by the PJ to explain the dog alerts by her car. “You’re the police,” she said. “You tell me.” Kate asked the PJ: “Are you trying to destroy our family altogether?”
Gerry was asked the same questions the next day but could not answer. (Sometime earlier a Leicestershire officer had said to him, just stick to what you know.) Why did the dogs only alert next to material belonging to the McCanns? The officer was brandishing the dog-handler’s report. And then: “Your daughter’s DNA, your daughter Madeleine McCann, how do you explain that?” “Show me that report,” Gerry asked. “No. This is the report that matters – with the dog.” Of course, they could not produce a DNA match because there wasn’t one.
The McCanns took heart when Goncalo Amaral was forced to step down after making public criticisms of them and the Leicestershire police – he had made the criticisms in a phone call to a journalist contact, not suggesting the comments were private or off the record.
The McCanns hope that Amaral’s replacement, Paulo Rebelo, a more sober, conservative character, will take a wide view of the inquiry. He is said to have stopped leaks to the press, and has been locked away on the upper floors of the station in Portimao reviewing the evidence with a team of officers.
Meanwhile, the McCanns are back home trying to recover some kind of normality. How long can you put your life on hold? They have the twins to think of. Gerry has gone back to work half-days, and has finally told the British Heart Foundation he plans to go ahead with the research fellowship they awarded him, a week before he was accused of being involved in his daughter’s death. He had told me, weeks ago, about the six-figure grant and how it meant almost nothing in terms of professional advancement, but might one day help in the prevention and treatment of heart disease.
He had prepared the application in his own time, working evenings and weekends.
In other circumstances it would have meant the world to him but, right now, he had other things on his mind.
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id96.html
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Don't expect me to react with some supposed Portuguese equivalent Carana revealed me..
I don't want you to react, I was just wondering what this was all about, nothing sinister, just curiosity.
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@ Carana
First error Smith claims the McCanns were separated on the 4th for question when Kate herself has told us Gerry sat behind her in her interview. Now who could have told him that ? And while judicial secrecy was still in place too ?
Gerry was obviously the supplier of much of this article.
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I don't want you to react, I was just wondering what this was all about, nothing sinister, just curiosity.
You might like to read this.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1992-06-09/Debate-20.html
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From the above article is what I find to be an interesting (on-topic) comment.
Finally, the PJ called. They told the McCanns they would be made official suspects – arguidos. The McCanns had noted the change of mood in Portugal, especially among the PJ, and the increasing viciousness of the Portuguese press. Some of the stories seemed so incredible and far-fetched – Kate, for instance, disposing of Madeleine’s body, or Madeleine’s DNA being found in the car the McCanns had hired three weeks after Madeleine disappeared – that I at first assumed they were the fanciful inventions of an unfettered press. I soon realised how well they reflected the thinking of the PJ. More recently I have discovered the stories were being fed to the press by the PJ, from the highest ranks. So much for judicial secrecy. One Portuguese journalist told me that segredo de justica – secrecy of justice – was like the speed limit. Everyone knows the law; nobody keeps to it.
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You might like to read this.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199293/cmhansrd/1992-06-09/Debate-20.html
Thanks, DCI, but I know the sorry story of Michael Cook. 8((()*/
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Poor chap beaten senseless denied a toilet, left in his own excrement, a questionable judicial decision.
Surely there are more important issues to pick out, here, than use of the word "porkies"?
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One Portuguese journalist told me that segredo de justica – secrecy of justice – was like the speed limit. Everyone knows the law; nobody keeps to it.[/i]
Portugueses have a sense of humour, not the British kind, more the Jewish one (especially in the Alentejo).
About respect of McCann case secret of justice, what do you think of the Panorama documentary, Carana ?
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One Portuguese journalist told me that segredo de justica – secrecy of justice – was like the speed limit. Everyone knows the law; nobody keeps to it.
I remember reading an interview in the written press with a Portuguese journalist (highly likely to be the same person) on this subject. The article doesn't seem to be online, so I can't provide a link.
From memory, I believe it was Damasão from CdaM.
His argument was that if the media fully respected judicial secrecy then Portugal would have no investigative journalism into crimes at all.
On the one hand, that wouldn't seem to be valid as reporting on trials and the post-mortem analysis via accessible files seem to be an important aspect of the freedom of the press in Portugal.
On the other hand, judicial secrecy may account for the fact that there does not seem to be an official police/press relations service.
The media want their stories and will obtain information (or the latest hypothesis) on ongoing cases anyway, one way or another.
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One Portuguese journalist told me that segredo de justica – secrecy of justice – was like the speed limit. Everyone knows the law; nobody keeps to it.
I remember reading an interview in the written press with a Portuguese journalist (highly likely to be the same person) on this subject. The article doesn't seem to be online, so I can't provide a link.
From memory, I believe it was Damasão from CdaM.
His argument was that if the media fully respected judicial secrecy then Portugal would have no investigative journalism into crimes at all.
On the one hand, that wouldn't seem to be valid as reporting on trials and the post-mortem analysis via accessible files seem to be an important aspect of the freedom of the press in Portugal.
On the other hand, judicial secrecy may account for the fact that there does not seem to be an official police/press relations service.
The media want their stories and will obtain information (or the latest hypothesis) on ongoing cases anyway, one way or another.
So we are agreed that no one adhered religiously to judicial secrecy ?
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This is clear. The secrecy of justice should have been adjusted to the fact the victim was a foreigner, they invented X, but he said nothing or actually what he said sounded as nothing. He was lacking skills (should have be taught by Mr Mitchell).
Journalists have to get informations. All ways are legitimate as long as they don't invent, don't defame, discard if they're not sure, take care of not hampering the investigation, etc. Very tough job.
This supposes highly cultured and educated journalists.
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So we are agreed that no one adhered religiously to judicial secrecy ?
What exactly was judicial secrecy supposed to cover?
How did so much detail end up in the PT press so soon?
Yes, someone close to the McCanns does seem to have provided details of their experience to the press (possibly more than one person over time), after several months of innuendo that they were somehow involved in her disappearance and that there was no point in searching for her.
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Poor chap beaten senseless denied a toilet, left in his own excrement, a questionable judicial decision.
Surely there are more important issues to pick out, here, than use of the word "porkies"?
There are, Ferryman, like not assuming as facts mere accusations. May the "chap" was right, may be not. If you know the truth, send a link. Otherwise this is myth feeding.
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What exactly was judicial secrecy supposed to cover?
How did so much detail end up in the PT press so soon?
Yes, someone close to the McCanns does seem to have provided details of their experience to the press (possibly more than one person over time), after several months of innuendo that they were somehow involved in her disappearance and that there was no point in searching for her.
No excuse. Judicial secrecy is absolute.
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Then you presumably don't approve of "sources close to the investigation" leakng to Felicia Cabrita and her Sol articles, or Tal & Qual, 24 Horas, CdaM and whoever else?
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Then you presumably don't approve of "sources close to the investigation" leakng to Felicia Cabrita and her Sol articles, or Tal & Qual, 24 Horas, CdaM and whoever else?
No.
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No excuse. Judicial secrecy is absolute.
One thing I condone is that the Portuguese authorities clamp down much harder on its own police than others for breaches of secrecy.
I think I'm right that Murat was granted leave to begin his libel actions before his arguido status was officially lifted.
Meanwhile, I gather breach of secrecy is one matter that will be dealt with in Amaral's crowded schedule of court appointments ...
Poor lamb
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Ferryman said 'Meanwhile, I gather breach of secrecy is one matter that will be dealt with in Amaral's crowded schedule of court appointments ...'
I understand the McCanns put in a complaint at the time of the Lisbon book banning about this. Where is your evidence that the complaint is being proceeded with ?
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Ferryman said 'Meanwhile, I gather breach of secrecy is one matter that will be dealt with in Amaral's crowded schedule of court appointments ...'
I understand the McCanns put in a complaint at the time of the Lisbon book banning about this. Where is your evidence that the complaint is being proceeded with ?
There's no question he's guilty of it. Of all people Morais confirmed ...
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Then you presumably don't approve of "sources close to the investigation" leakng to Felicia Cabrita and her Sol articles, or Tal & Qual, 24 Horas, CdaM and whoever else?
One thing is leaking an information, another obtaining an information.
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There's no question he's guilty of it. Of all people Morais confirmed ...
But that's not what I asked. Where is your evidence that the complaint was proceeded with ?
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The McCanns couple lawyer, Isabel Duarte, now intends to sue the former coordinator of the PJ, Gonçalo Amaral, for having allegedly violated the secrecy of justice in the Madeleine McCann case.
by Frederico Duarte Carvalho, journalist
Based on the testimony of the publisher of "The Truth of the Lie", Mário Sena Lopes, Isabel Duarte realized that the work would have been delivered to the publisher "Guerra & Paz" before the 21st July 2008, the date of the final dispatch that archived the process. Therefore, Gonçalo Amaral violated the secrecy and must pay for it.
However, at the time that Gonçalo Amaral began working on the project, it was already expected - by the act of the law - that the process would leave the secrecy of justice close to the month of August. But, by coincidence, the process was made public days before the publication of the book - the latter had been edited on the 24th July [the book was released to the public on the 25th, Friday, July 2008].
That is, Gonçalo Amaral was even willing to violate the law of the secrecy of justice and start a media debate on the subject. Except that with the archival made a few days before the launch of the book, Gonçalo Amaral could no longer be accused of violating the secrecy. At most, he could be charged with an attempt to breach the secrecy of justice. And he really tried, but even that was not allowed...
in Para mim tanto faz
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The McCanns couple lawyer, Isabel Duarte, now intends to sue the former coordinator of the PJ, Gonçalo Amaral, for having allegedly violated the secrecy of justice in the Madeleine McCann case.
by Frederico Duarte Carvalho, journalist
Based on the testimony of the publisher of "The Truth of the Lie", Mário Sena Lopes, Isabel Duarte realized that the work would have been delivered to the publisher "Guerra & Paz" before the 21st July 2008, the date of the final dispatch that archived the process. Therefore, Gonçalo Amaral violated the secrecy and must pay for it.
However, at the time that Gonçalo Amaral began working on the project, it was already expected - by the act of the law - that the process would leave the secrecy of justice close to the month of August. But, by coincidence, the process was made public days before the publication of the book - the latter had been edited on the 24th July [the book was released to the public on the 25th, Friday, July 2008].
That is, Gonçalo Amaral was even willing to violate the law of the secrecy of justice and start a media debate on the subject. Except that with the archival made a few days before the launch of the book, Gonçalo Amaral could no longer be accused of violating the secrecy. At most, he could be charged with an attempt to breach the secrecy of justice. And he really tried, but even that was not allowed...
in Para mim tanto faz
And the evidence Amaral still faces court action over this ?
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Staring you in the face ...
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Staring you in the face ...
Really ? Do you have anything that isn't already over two years old ?