Absolutely true, refusing to answer the simplest of questions, avoiding a reconstruction and generally being obstructive and abusive to police officers has never been seen in policing circles as being conducive with innocence.
Gerry McCann went against legal advice to remain silent and answered all the questions put to him at his arguido interview
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Portuguese detectives knew there was no conclusive evidence against the McCanns three days before they interviewed them and made them suspects, official files have disclosed.
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Officers had been told in an email from the Forensic Science Service laboratory in Birmingham that no conclusive traces of Madeleine's DNA had been found in the family's hire car.
But detectives went on to tell Mr McCann, during an eight hour interrogation, that his daughter's DNA had been found in the boot of the vehicle, which was rented more than three weeks after she vanished.
A friend of the couple said: "It was pretty clear they were seeking a confession and were prepared to do this (put forward false information) to achieve that.
"Serious questions need to be asked about why this was put to Gerry as fact. It was sloppy at best and deliberately manipulative at worst.
"A number of senior officers went down the route of making assumptions and suppositions and trying to force a confession to something that didn't happen."
This was one of the main areas of suspicion and Mr McCann was made a suspect or "arguido" into Madeleine's disappearance, along with his wife, immediately after being questioned at Portimao police station on September 7.
The couple's spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "There was never any 100 per cent match with Madeleine's DNA.
Caution was expressed from the very start.
"Police were wrong to pursue this line so vigorously, and the Portuguese legal system has now accepted that there was no evidence to support it.
"I can confirm that the Portuguese police put it to Gerry as a fact that Madeleine's DNA had been found in both the apartment and the vehicle when it is now clear that the initial FSS report had made no such claim.
"You have to ask yourself what the police were trying to achieve by overstating evidence that they didn't have, nor could claim to have.
"One wonders, under those circumstances, what the motivation was."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/2501055/Madeleine-McCann-Portuguese-detectives-lied-to-Gerry-McCann-about-DNA-evidence.htmlKate McCann very sensibly in my opinion exercised her legal right as an arguida to remain silent.
Neither Kate nor Gerry McCann avoided returning to Portugal for a reconstruction. They had to legally had the request been made. Others, including an independent witness, took legal advice as a direct result of a breakdown of trust in the Portuguese police.
In my opinion their experiences of the Portuguese handling of the case justified their caution; the McCanns were presented with lies in interview ... would they have fared any better?
In my opinion the only abuse evident in those arguido interviews which were not recorded ... was very one sided and came from the interviewers desperate for 'confession' to 'solve' their case, not the interviewees desperate for their daughter.
