Friday, January 28, 2011


Gerry McCann in America | The Sun |News|Multimedia|PA Videos


24 Jul 2007 ... Gerry McCann is in the US for a four-day fact-finding visit with the ... He will meet a senior member of first lady Laura Bush's staff as ...
www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/multimedia/pa/article248806.ece

  • Madeleine's father quizzed over decision to leave her on her own ...

    25 Jul 2007 ... Gerry visited the White House on Tuesday to meet with senior staff of First Lady Laura Bush. Madeleine McCann has been missing since May 3 ...
    www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Madeleines-father-quizzed-decision-leave-own.html

  • McCanns help launch new missing persons website | Mail Online

    10 Aug 2007 ... A video featuring a series of photographs of Madeleine ...
    www.dailymail.co.uk/.../McCanns-help-launch-new-missing-persons-website. html

  • Gerry's USA Trip

    The father of missing Madeleine McCann is flying to Washington where he may meet First Lady Laura Bush. Gerry McCann will visit the US to talk to American ...
    www.mccannfiles.com/id209.html - Cached

  • Hawkeye1's GLOSSARY of the Madeleine McCann case : Reference ...

    10 Oct 2009 ... Armstrong, Sarah = Deputy Chief of Staff to First Lady Laura Bush; met with Gerry McCann on his visit to the White House ...
    thepjfiles.prophpbb.com/topic261.html - Cached

  • Why Madeleine Vanished ? on Myspace

    KATE and Gerry McCann have been blamed for the disappearance of their daughter Ma (view .... The First Lady, Laura Bush, gets involved; delivering a creepy, ...
    www.myspace.com/242526171 - Cached

  • Sombre Service to Mark 100 Days Since Madeleine Disappeared

    10 Aug 2007 ... Kate and Gerry McCann will today mark 100 days since their daughter ... In a message of support, the American first lady Laura Bush said: ...
    www.buzzle.com/articles/148424.html - Cached

  • The McCann Lobby: Who's Outside The Box? A Glossary of Characters

    9 Oct 2008 ... Gerry McCann 'Fact Finding Missions' June/July 2007. ..... Patrons include Laura Bush and Cherie Blair. described as a 'friend' the McCanns ...
    www.thesargeants.net/dblog/articolo.asp?articolo=179 - Cached - Similar

  • McCanns' merciless trial by media | The Australian

    15 Sep 2007 ... Over the past six weeks, Kate and Gerry McCann, both 39-year-old ... and US first lady Laura Bush all met the McCanns after Madeleine ...
    www.theaustralian.com.au/.../mccanns...by.../story-e6frg6to-1111114422416
  • Monday, January 24, 2011

    The PJ is forced to investigate abduction lead

    Alípio Ribeiro, the Polícia Judiciária’s national director, received a telephone call from John Buck, the British ambassador in Portugal, on the night that Madeleine disappeared from the Ocean Club, on the 3rd of May

    by José Carlos Marques / P. M.

    At around 11 p.m., approximately two hours after the child’s disappearance was communicated, Alípio Ribeiro had to interrupt a private dinner in order to listen to the diplomat. The phone call was the first sign that the English were very interested in following the PJ’s action closely and to push the investigations into the direction of an abduction.

    “The PJ lost too much time investigating the abduction”, a source linked to the investigation told Correio da Manhã. The English diplomacy’s pressure only relented when British police officers arrived in Portugal and supported the redirecting of the investigation towards the hypothesis of homicide. The biological traces that were found inside the apartment were decisive in changing the inquiry’s route, or at least, for the PJ to publicly admit to that change.

    The decision to deepen the possibility of the child’s death at the Ocean Club – and the consequent reevaluation of Maddie’s parents’ statements, as well as their friends’ – was made while considering the English police officers’ opinion. The interview that Olegário Sousa – the Judiciária’s chief inspector who has been serving as the police’s spokesman in this case – gave to BBC and ITN televisions yesterday was planned with these agents.

    The choice of these two television channels was motivated by the indignation that the English police officers in the Algarve felt themselves, concerning the accusations that have been made against the PJ by the British press. BBC and ITN have been covering the case with more coldness and impartiality, which is the reason why they were given privileged access to the interview.

    This was the first time that Olegário Sousa publicly admitted the possibility of Madeleine being dead. A position that places the McCanns in the centre of the investigation, a situation that has been handled ‘with tweezers’ by the Portuguese police.
    McCanns withdraw complaint against journalists from Tal&Qual
    The McCann couple has decided to withdraw the complaint against the Tal & Qual journalists who reported that the police believed that Maddie McCann had been killed by her parents, according to a press release from the Public Ministry in Lagos.
    Tal &Qual
    The document states that Gerry and Kate McCann declared that they “have no interest in proceeding” with the case, which originated from a criminal complaint that was filed by the couple against Emídio Fernando, the former director of now extinct Tal&Qual, and journalist Ana Catarina Guerreiro.
    In August 2007, the two journalists signed an article, which was front page news in the paper, according to which the Polícia Judiciária (PJ) believed that it had been the couple that had accidentally killed their daughter.
    Emídio Fernando told Lusa that he was satisfied over the archiving of the process, although he never even felt relieved, because he had never been worried in the first place.
    “I was always tranquil, because I never accused anyone. The news said that the PJ didn’t believe in the McCanns’ innocence. What we wrote in the news was that they were going to be heard and that they might become arguidos”, he said.
    Emídio Fernando stressed that, at the time when he wrote the article, he fully trusted the source and he was “absolutely certain” that the police would fetch the couple, which was confirmed two weeks after the front page news.
    “I wouldn’t change a comma if it were today. My only failure was to say that the couple would be heard in the week after [the article] and they ended up being heard two weeks later”, he added.
    Concerning the motives for the McCanns’ withdrawal, Emídio Fernando says that he has no idea whatsoever, but he underlines that at the time, he understood that the couple wished to sue him, he merely found it was strange that they decided to do so one week after the article was published.
    source: Diário de Notícias, 17.08.2009
    Previous….
    Gerry McCann interview for the BBC
    31st August 2007
    “We firmly believe that the report was speculative, defamatory and published despite official statements to the contrary, which is why we have instructed lawyers. Our daughter Madeleine was snatched from her bed on 3 May. She is still missing. The police have said time and time again we are not suspects. These are the facts. Everything else is at best speculation and in some cases downright lies.”
    “We have of course considered it. In August 2007, we did issue proceedings against the Tal e Qual newspaper and that organisation has subsequently gone bust. An indicator of it is that is still going through the process of the courts. It is very unlikely that we will follow it up but we have chosen at this time not to take action in Portugal, primarily because we have been advised that it would be a very long and drawn-out process.(…) We want to work with the Portuguese in the search and although we cannot and will not rule it out in future, for the time being we have decided to try and get on with doing what we think everyone should be doing, and focusing on Madeleine and not on what has been said in the past.”

    Tuesday, January 18, 2011

    WIKILEAKS: Pushing for Americas Amber Alert...before the final stage of micro chipping children

    Thursday, 11 October 2007, 13:48
    UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 LISBON 002605
    SIPDIS
    SIPDIS
    EO 12958 N/A
    TAGS KJUS, MOPS, PO, PREL, PTER, EUN
    SUBJECT: EU JHA INFORMAL MINISTERIAL
    1. Summary. EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers met informally in Lisbon October 1-2. An embassy officer attended to follow discussion of such topics as the elimination of land and sea travel barriers in December, the establishment of a counternarcotics analysis and operations center, the submission of a package of counterterrorism proposals by Vice President Frattini in November, the submission of a package of border control proposals by Frattini in February, and the establishment of a missing children alert system based on the U.S. Amber Alert. End summary.
    Justice and Home Affairs Informal Ministerial
    ---------------------------------------------
    2. European Union Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Ministers held an informal ministerial in Lisbon October 1-2, chaired by Portuguese Minister of Internal Administration Rui Pereira and Minister for Justice Alberto Costa. Representatives from relevant EU institutions, Vice President of the European Commission Franco Frattini, and the Turkish Minister for Justice Mehmet Ali Sahin also participated. An embassy officer attended the proceedings to hear public statements first-hand and to engage attendees on the margins.
    3. As a lead-in to the meetings, on September 30 participating member states formally signed the protocol to establish the Maritime Analysis and Operations Center - Narcotics (MAOC-N). Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom founded the center to share intelligence and coordinate counternarcotics efforts. The U.S., though not formally a member, has liaison officers assigned to the MAOC.
    4. Also on the agenda but in advance of the informal ministerial meetings, the Spanish and Portuguese Interior Ministers held a bilateral meeting in which they established a task force to coordinate counterterrorism investigations and prosecutions. Pereira noted that although bilateral cooperation had long existed, the task force was established to be more proactive in regard to investigations and cooperation. During the proceedings, Portugal also signed a bilateral agreement with Malta to resettle refugees in Portugal that are currently resident in Malta.
    Home Affairs - Prevention of Terrorism and Border Management
    --------------------------------------------- ---------------
    5. SIS/VIS: Frattini and Pereira both noted that by Christmas, all land and sea barriers in the Schengen area will be removed for nine participating Schengen states, Cyprus having requested an extension. Air travel barriers, he said, would be removed in March. Noting that the Schengen Information System (SIS) has succeeded in its testing phase, Frattini suggested that the formal decision to implement the new rules will be taken in November. Frattini also suggested that the EU must have an entry-exit register complete with biometric identifiers. This would, he opined, help manage overstays as well as be a useful data source for security services. Additionally, he noted that various databases and security systems need to be integrated and expanded to include travelers without visas. Moreover, such a European surveillance system must be accessible to local law enforcement. An aide to Frattini said that this package of proposals would be submitted to the college of Commissioners in February.
    6. PNR/ETA: Frattini said he would submit a terrorism package to the Commissioners November 6 that includes a proposal to establish formally an EU-wide Passenger Name Recognition (PNR) system. He noted that the requirements demanded by U.S. negotiators convinced him that the European security services should have access to the same kind of information. Pereira and German Minister Schauble suggested that, in addition to the intelligence value, a PNR system would allow the EU to negotiate with the U.S. on an equal footing and would allow for balanced cooperation. Pereira said he would also support a PNR for intra-European flights. Schauble said further discussion on that point would be needed. Frattini and Schauble both noted that electronic travel authorizations (ETA) are useful not just for improving security, but also improving the customer service at airports. With ever increasing crowds at airports, Schauble noted that it is in a traveler's interest to participate in a voluntary ETA program.
    7. Internet: Frattini will also submit a proposal to punish misuse of the internet. This will not, he stressed, be a limit on the freedom of expression. Pereira noted that the proposal would be limited to taking down sites that specifically incite terrorism or provide instruction in how
    LISBON 00002605 002 OF 002
    to commit terrorist acts. Indeed, added Frattini, the EU already has a regulation that prohibits transfer of illegal data on the internet, without causing concerns of limitation of freedom of speech. This proposal, he continued, would only add the specific mention of terrorism. Such an update, he opined, is a good example of why the EU needs regularly to review and update its bodies of law.
    8. Conspiracy: Pereira noted that Italian Minister Amato suggested that the ministers consider developing an EU agreement to incorporate conspiracy statutes into existing law. Current legislation is directed towards formal terrorist organizations, which does not adequately address current realities. Italy, and a few other states, punish conspiracy without being part of a formal organization; Pereira and Frattini each enthusiastically supported the idea that the EU consider the question.
    9. Pruhm Treaty: Slovenian Interior Minister Dragutin Mate suggested that, agreement being reached, it was incumbent on Slovenia to develop the technical handbooks for implementation.
    Justice
    -------
    10. e-Justice Portal: Costa issued a statement that ministers agreed that the EU should have an information technology system to facilitate access to member states' judicial systems and registry systems. Member states will compile best practices on IT and regularly review performance.
    11. Missing Children Alert: Frattini used the well-known case of Madeleine McCann, a missing British girl, to lay out his intention to develop an EU wide alert system for missing children. Frattini specifically and repeatedly mentioned the Amber Alert system in the U.S. as the model that the EU needed to copy. In addition, the e-Justice Portal, according to Costa, will include a list of missing children and direct users to appropriate Hague Convention resources.
    12. Child Protection: Costa also noted that the ministers agreed to expand the role of the European Mediator for international child abductions and to support the strengthening and implementation of laws related to child protection. Hoffman

    WikiLeaks cables: UK police 'developed' evidence against McCanns

    British ambassador's reported comments to US counterpart offer insight into role of UK police in 2007 investigation
    Madeleine McCann on the day she disappeared
    Madeleine McCann is mentioned twice in the WikiLeaks cables. Photograph: PA
    British police helped to "develop evidence" against Madeleine McCann's parents as they were investigated by Portuguese police as formal suspects in the disappearance of their daughter, the US ambassador to Portugal was told by his British counterpart in September 2007.
    The meeting between US ambassador Al Hoffman and the British ambassador, Alexander Wykeham Ellis, took place a fortnight after Kate and Gerry McCann were formally declared arguidos, or suspects, by Portuguese police. The McCanns have said that there was "absolutely no evidence to implicate them in Madeleine's disappearance whatsoever."
    In a diplomatic cable marked confidential, the US ambassador reported: "Without delving into the details of the case, Ellis admitted that the British police had developed the current evidence against the McCann parents, and he stressed that authorities from both countries were working co-operatively."
    The comments attributed to the ambassador appear to contradict the widespread perception at the time that Portuguese investigators were the driving force behind the treatment of the McCanns as suspects in the case.
    The disclosure comes as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange returns to court in an attempt to secure bail following his arrest last week at the request of Swedish authorities who want to interview him over allegations of sexual assault. A number of other cables released by the whistleblowers' website shed new light on aspects of the financial crisis. Revelations include:
    In one of two cables referring to the McCann case, the US ambassador notes: "Madeleine McCann's disappearance in the south of Portugal in May 2007 has generated international media attention with controversy surrounding the Portuguese-led police investigation and the actions of Madeleine's parents."
    He reported that his British counterpart thought "that the media frenzy was to be expected and was acceptable as long as government officials keep their comments behind closed doors".
    It was not until 21 July 2008 that the Portuguese authorities shelved their investigation and lifted the arguido status of the McCanns. Responding to the contents of the cable, a spokesman for the McCanns told the Guardian: "This is an entirely historic note that is more than three years old. Subsequently, Kate and Gerry had their arguido status lifted, with the Portuguese authorities making it perfectly clear that there was absolutely no evidence to implicate them in Madeleine's disappearance whatsoever.
    "To this day, they continue to work tirelessly on the search for their daughter, co-operating when appropriate with both the Portuguese and British authorities."
    British authorities had substantial involvement in the investigation launched after Madeleine disappeared in May 2007 from the holiday apartment where the McCanns had left their three children in bed before joining friends at a nearby restaurant in the Algarve village of Praia da Luz. At least one British sniffer dog was used in the investigation and, according to reports, was said to have picked up the scent of a dead body in the apartment.
    In 2008, when a dossier detailing investigations by Portuguese police was made public, it emerged British scientists had warned that DNA tests on a sample from the McCanns' holiday hire car were inconclusive days before they were made suspects. It is known that the Forensic Science Service analysed material sent to Britain by Portuguese police. A spokesman for Leicestershire police said their involvement in the investigation was limited to co-ordinating UK-based inquiries on behalf of the Portuguese authorities.
    DAILY MIRROR: “Madeleine McCann suspect’s fury at finding GPS tracker”
    Madeleine McCann suspect Robert Murat has discovered tracking devices fitted to his cars. British expat Murat, 33, found the GPS bug when he was fixing a fault on his VW Transporter.
    He checked girlfriend Michaela Walczuch’s motor and found – another stuck to that. Furious Murat believes Portuguese police bugged his cars in a desperate bid to nail him for the abduction of Madeleine, four, from Praia da Luz in May.
    He is also probing whether Kate and Gerry McCann’s private detective agency Metodo 3 could have done it on its own initiative.

    Sunday, January 16, 2011

    McCanns: 'Amber alert' could've saved Maddie

    Kate and Gerry McCann today pleaded for Europe-wide backing for a cross-border missing child alert system.

    The parents of Madeleine, missing for nearly a year after disappearing from a holiday resort in Portugal, urged Euro-MPs to put their names to a declaration demanding swift agreement on a US-style "amber alert" system to track abducted youngsters across the continent if necessary.
    McCanns Kate and Gerry McCann
    Mrs McCann told a meeting at the European Parliament in Brussels: "We employ you to support our declaration. Please do not wait for another child and family to suffer as we have".
    Mr McCann said: "This is a very simple child alert system with almost no cost implications - who would not support such a system?"
    But the couple heard from MEPs today that efforts two years ago to introduce the same missing child plan failed to get sufficient support to succeed.
    Today hopes were high that their high-profile loss of Madeleine will help galvanise full backing in the European Parliament and from EU governments.
    They explained their continuing pain at Madeleine's disappearance last year. Mrs McCann told MEPs: "I cannot explain just how totally devastating this was. If anyone was wanting to inflict the greatest amount of pain on us then they have done that".
    She told reporters the couple would treat the anniversary of Maddie's disppearance as a 'private affair'.
    The McCann's discussed the American system during a visit to Washington last month and are convinced EU countries can cooperate in setting up a similar rapid response network.
    Mr McCann told MEPs about the high success rate of "Amber Alert", under which nearly 400 abducted children have been successfully recovered in America since 2003 - 80% of them rescued in the crucial first 72 hours after being snatched.
    By contrast Europe can only claim limited success in cross-border cooperation, with only a patchwork of partial national monitoring systems.
    European data-sharing on child abduction cases is limited, and so far only France and Belgium have introduced comprehensive national child alert systems.
    They enable national authorities to flash up electronic missing child information on motorway signboards within 30 minutes of a confirmed case of abduction, as well as triggering bulletins and radio and television stations, interrupting existing programming in the first hours after a case is notified.
    Mr McCann said it was now up to European authorities to cooperate in spreading the same system across all EU countries.
    He said statistics from America showed that a speedy response was critical in such cases and the system should only be reserved for the most serious abductions, where the authorities believe a child's life is at risk and where detailed information on the child and, hopefully, the abductor can be spread as swiftly as possible.
    Then he read out the declaration that the McCann's hope European Parliament will approve.
    It calls on all EU governments to introduce a missing child alert system, "the activation of which shall require the immediate supply to relevant news media, order authorities, customs and law enforcement agencies of details of the missing child and the suspected abductors".
    They explained their continuing pain at Madeleine's disappearance last year. Mrs McCann told MEPs: "I cannot explain just how totally devastating this was. If anyone was wanting to inflict the greatest amount of pain on us then they have done that".
    She also spoke about the fear and pain that her daughter must have been through, adding: "She is four years old".


    Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/139995-mccanns-amber-alert-couldve-saved-maddie#ixzz1BCJUupUX

    Thursday, January 13, 2011

    Lies,damned lies

    EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com

    By Dr Martin Roberts
    12 January 2011


    LIES, DAMNED LIES AND STATISTICS

    Such are the hallmarks, regrettably, of the McCann case, the first two in particular. But let's begin by allowing the McCann with a professional interest in epidemiology to dispense with the third.
    Gerry McCann (to Ian Woods of Sky News): "...If you think about the millions and millions of British families who go to the Mediterranean each year, really the chances of this happening are in the order of a hundred million to one."
    Or more than seven times the odds against winning the U.K. national lottery jackpot (1 in 13,983,816).

    Are the McCanns really that unlucky?

    Now to more current affairs.

    At last, for anyone hoping the McCanns would be brought to book, that wish is on the verge of being granted. A recent facebook statement by the pair explains:
    "We have pushed back the release of our book to Madeleine's birthday. May 12, 2011. We need as much exposure for the book so we can get Madeleine home."
    As much exposure as what, may I ask?. 'So that' = 'in order to.' Hence the purpose of book exposure is to 'get Madeleine home.' Put another way, the return of Madeleine McCann is dependent upon the number of people aware of / the number who will have purchased / the number who will have read the McCanns' forthcoming opus. How does that work? How many individuals are required to read the Book of Revelation before its prophecies are enacted?

    Clarification appears to be in order.
    Clarence Mitchell (to Stephen Nolan, BBC Radio Five Live, 7.1.2011): "No, it's going to be Kate's story. Kate is writing it. Gerry, of course, is... is helping her but essentially it will be Kate's work. For... virtually from the first day it happened, errr... I was coming under pressure from various publishers, some of them very polite, but very persistent, saying they should write a book, or it should be ghost written. Kate and Gerry always said they didn't want to do that, they didn't feel the time was right, they had far more important things to do in the search for their daughter. They've now decided, and it's largely been driven by the need for funds for the... for the search to continue, that the time is right for the book to be written. Kate has been writing it for some months. She's probably finished about sixty to seventy thousand words and, errm... it's coming out on May 12th which is Madeleine's eighth birthday. It is designed to keep the search for her going. That is the simple reason."
    Jolly noble of Clarence to withstand pressure from the publishers from 'the first day it happened.' Experience being a great teacher, he doubtless found the subsequent days when it happened rather easier to deal with. Whatever. The official line, via that ubiquitous 'source close to the McCanns' is clearly that the book is being written to raise money (no surprise there then), not as some catalytic precursor to Madeleine's safe return, which would hardly be contingent upon 'Kate's story' in any case.
    Clarence Mitchell: "Errr... All sorts of enquiries, interview requests, suggestions for features, sightings of possibly Madeleine. All sorts of things. They all have to either be passed on to the private investigators or we take decisions as to how we deal with them."
    The search for Madeleine must be maintained. But notice how the vigilant are now to be accredited, not with the likelihood of sighting Madeleine, whose feasible presence was previously a given, but the categorical sighting of someone who might be Madeleine. It is a subtle shift in emphasis, but 'possible' is less an attribute of sightings per se than of the object's very existence. There are clearly two principal agents in this investigative process, private investigators and the decision-making 'team.' No other body is included in the rosta. How therefore can Mitchell go on to make the following claim?
    Clarence Mitchell: "Anything that develops a profile, errr... as high as this case has, does attract all sorts of people. You're quite right. Errm... most of them, the vast majority, are well meaning and if information can be checked out and is credible or potentially credible then it goes through, not only to the British police, it goes through to the Portuguese police, and it goes through to the private investigators to be assessed; prioritised. It's very much a police operation. It's former British policemen that are working on it and then they will act upon it. Now amongst those, of course, there are the occasional slightly more lunatic things that are said."
    Here the 'private investigators' are third in line, and yet they do the assessment and prioritise the information. Neither the British nor Portuguese police receive information before it is 'checked out' and adjudged to be credible or even potentially so. Hence primacy is still vested in the private enterprise. The batting order has been cunningly inverted. This was made clear previously elsewhere (to Peter Levy - BBC Radio Humberside - 6.1.2011):
    "But currently, errm... it's the... the investigation is a private investigation being led by Dave Edgar, who's a former RUC officer, errr... retired, errr... and he calls in assistance, errr... from his colleague, former colleagues in various police forces, as and when he needs it. Errr... And there is work going on in Britain and in Portugal at different times but, because of the sensitive nature of it, obviously I can't go into any detail, but it's very much ongoing."
    It is very much not a police operation, and its conduct by former members of the RUC does not make it so. What it does do is make it illegal in Portugal. One can understand Mitchell's circumspection when it comes to discussing it therefore.

    'Follow the money' say some. For now we should follow the grammar - the logic.
    Stephen Nolan: "How possible do you think it is though, Clarence... how possible is it that Madeleine is still alive given that level of publicity?"

    Clarence Mitchell: "It is still possible that she is alive because there is no evidence to suggest that she isn't and that's the whole basis on which the investigation, the private investigation, continues to this day. In the absence of anything to suggest that she has been harmed or, as you suggest, has been killed, and there is no evidence to suggest that, then not only Kate and Gerry but everybody working with them will continue to keep going until an answer is found."
    Let's not forget that this is a media interview, not a court of law, hence the word 'evidence' should carry rather fewer constraints; one is entitled to consider indicators beyond the wholly tangible. That being the case, Mitchell's opening statement here is false and the 'whole basis on which the private investigation continues' is in turn a falsehood. Mitchell goes on to re-iterate the logic of the absurd - and more than once.
    Stephen Nolan: "What's your gut instinct now as to what's happened? Are you comfortable sharing that?"

    Clarence Mitchell: "My instinct has been, and remains, that there is a chance that she's alive and that's the basis we're all doing this. We wouldn't... if we thought there was no hope, you know, what would be the point of going on? But, because there is that absence of anything to suggest what's happened, it is just as logical to keep going. That's certainly what keeps Kate and Gerry going. Obviously, as her parents, they will maintain that. But for all of their supporters, people who are trying to help them, myself included, I honestly don't know what happened and therefore I've got to keep going, and as long as they want me to keep helping them then I'm happy to do that."
    'Evidence' has become 'anything to suggest' and anyone who has followed this case with even a degree of care will know that there is plenty to suggest what didn't happen as well as what did. Something happened. Something didn't happen. Kate McCann is on record as telling all-and-sundry that she 'knows what happened' because she was there. Perhaps Mitchell has been out of the loop for too long.
    Peter Levy: "What do they (the McCanns) believe, what do they think is the strongest possibility of... of what happened to little Madeleine?"

    Clarence Mitchell: "Kate and Gerry know Mad... know their daughter well enough to know she didn't wander out of the apartment, as has often been speculated. The only assumption they can make is that somebody took her out of the apartment. That is the working hypothesis on which the private investigation is also based. That there is somebody, perhaps one, or just two or three people out there who know what happened and that there was an element of pre-meditation, pre-planning went into it. Possibly because of the location of the apartment; it was on a fairly remote corner of that particular resort. Errm... Children would have been coming and going over months/weeks beforehand and there... it... the private investigation believes there was a degree of pre-meditation and planning, errm... and the very fact that nothing has been found of Madeleine since, not a trace, tends to suggest that she has been taken somewhere else and has been... hopefully, is being looked after, or at least cared for, errr... with someone. Errr... That is... that is the working hypothesis. In some cases, if... if God forbid, she had been harmed, she probably would have been found long ago but she hasn't been and that's why they keep going."
    Have you ever heard such nonsense? The McCanns, who know what happened ("I knew immediately, she'd been taken" - Kate McCann) are reduced to making a solitary assumption, which in turn becomes the fulcrum for the private (British police) investigation, and the belief that an element of planning is entailed, on account of the comings and goings of children in Praia da Luz weeks and months beforehand! ("They'd been watching us for several days I'm sure" - Kate McCann). Oh, and "the very fact that nothing has been found of Madeleine since, not a trace, tends to suggest that she has been taken somewhere else." You don't say.
    Peter Levy: "So the belief is that she is... she is alive and being looked after, and probably still in Portugal?"

    Clarence Mitchell: "As... as Kate and Gerry have always said, until they have the answer as to what has happened and until they are presented with incontrovertible proof that she has been harmed, they will continue to believe - just as logically, without any evidence to the contrary - that she could still just as easily be alive."
    Surely someone with professional credentials sufficient to have seen him seconded to the Foreign Office should realise that 'belief' and 'logic' are not stable mates. Clarence Mitchell probably does realise that. Just as probably he, as well as the McCanns, is banking on the rest of us not doing so.
    Clarence Mitchell: "...To this day there is a very small but highly vocal minority online; the joys of the Internet. The Internet is a wonderful thing but it has its downside, as we all know. There is a very vocal but very small minority of people who believe Kate and Gerry were negligent and to this day they rail and rant against them. They are powerless, they know nothing and it... it's totally irrelevant. But we keep a... a weather eye on what they're saying and if action needs to be taken, in certain cases, then it is."
    Oh what wishful thinking! Mitchell's Lurkio moment ('Woe, woe and thrice woe.') may well return to haunt him. The 'very small minority… are powerless (wrong), know nothing (wrong), and it's totally irrelevant.' (wrong again).

    And so we progress from the disingenuous to the downright deceitful.
    Stephen Nolan: "Did the campaign cost a lot of money?"

    Clarence Mitchell: "...It was all spent in terms of the investigation and running a private investigation in two countries, sometimes in several continents where if things have to be followed up around the world, is a very expensive business. All of that's been spent on various contracts, on various private agencies, errm... since... since it happened."
    Lawyers with expertise in extradition and libel were most certainly contracted after 'it happened', the latter having spent rather longer in the crease to date, although the innings is far from over and the tail-enders may yet get to take their turn.
    Stephen Nolan: "And presumably, Clarence, you're on the phone to the editors of those newspapers warning them about legal threats. The lawyers are on the phone. You're on the phone trying to stop them doing this and continuing to do this?"
    (We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a previous exchange on the subject of 'negligence,' a factor defined earlier to Stephen Nolan as 'irrelevant'):
    Peter Levy: "Why did it capture the imagination so much?"

    Clarence Mitchell: "Oh, how long's your programme? There are all sorts of reasons but essentially, errm... it... it played into the... every parental nightmare of losing your children whilst on holiday, errr... it raised the whole question of parental responsibility. Kate and Gerry felt they and their friends were mounting a perfectly correct and proper checking system on the... on the... given the... the lack of resources available to them, at the time, but they made a mistake and they... they got it wrong.”

    "...there's a very small vocal minority online who... who attack them for being negligent. That is completely misplaced and entirely wrong."
    How come the case raised such an 'irrelevant' question? That the parents opted not to pay for additional child minding does not imply a lack of resource - the same resource they'd availed themselves of on a daily basis. And if a stranger steals a child, how is that the parents' mistake? Unless, of course, they made the mistake of 'contributory negligence.' But then the subject would not be altogether irrelevant, misplaced or entirely wrong, would it?

    (We return you now to Clarence Mitchell answering Stephen Nolan)
    Clarence Mitchell: "...the whole thing was a nonsense but it was driving sales of papers…obviously there were legitimate questions about child safety and, errr... parental responsibility….We would talk to journalists on the ground and we would talk to editors. It made a difference sometimes. Overall, in certain cases, it made not jot... not a jot of difference."
    Well I take back what was said earlier about Mitchell's awareness of belief versus logic. Anyone capable of equating the general with the specific in such an ad hoc manner is likely not to appreciate the difference between empiricism and blind faith after all. Rather more importantly, CM makes it abundantly clear that questions pertaining to child safety and parental responsibility, i.e. questions of negligence, were both legitimate and inevitable. And in case you should have missed this devious operative's earlier remark on the subject, here it is again:
    "...there's a very small vocal minority online who... who attack them for being negligent. That is completely misplaced and entirely wrong."
    Not misplaced then. And when one takes into account the parents' own admissions, e.g. 'extraordinarily we went to the Tapas bar', by way of explanation for their leaving three children under five alone and unattended for more than an hour, 'entirely wrong' doesn't seem to fit the subsequent questioning either. Still, something should be done about maverick reporting shouldn't it? Let's conclude with the authoritative view of a PR professional, as adept at employing 'weasels' as any other in his line of work.
    Stephen Nolan: "So, Clarence, what... what needs to happen? Does... does the PCC work, the Press Complaints Commission? Errr... Does there need to be a change of legislation? What needs to happen?"

    Clarence Mitchell: "Well, we... we tried to resort to the PCC, at times, and they were very helpful in terms of logistical things, like keeping photographers away from the McCann's home. There were photographers camped outside their house, at the end of their drive, for six months. We even had paparazzi photographers, who normally do celebrity jobs in... in Los Angeles, turning up looking for them. And, you know, we had to patiently explain the McCanns were not celebrities, they didn't warrant this sort of intrusion and these photographers needed to be moved. Now the PCC were fantastic in that case, they were really helpful. But in terms of making the news desks and the editors in certain papers sit up and really listen, I'm afraid we had to, reluctantly, pick up the rather large hammer of defamation action and say, 'You will apologise, you will settle this, errr... on our terms, or we will go further'. And thankfully, after a lot of discussion - the Express group being the best example - finally agreed with us. Errm... But it was a reluctant action. You know, it shouldn't have got to that stage. But it wasn't of our making."
    For those unfamiliar with the copywriter's technique, 'We tried to resort to the PCC at times' means exactly what it says. Most of the time they did not resort to the PCC at all, and on those occasions when they might have done so they only tried.

    The PCC for their part have long since explained that their role is not to pre-judge the outcome of reportage but to take action in the event that they receive a complaint. The McCanns did not complain to the PCC about the Express group coverage, for example. The 'large hammer of defamation' was not an instrument of last resort, except in the chronological sense. The majority of what was written in the press during the torrid period for which the McCanns claimed damages could easily have been nipped in the bud by them early on. It wasn't. Kate's 'story,' all important for bringing Madeleine home, could have been written and published long before now, there being a sense of urgency attaching to any child's disappearance, or that of an adult. It wasn't.

    Four years on. We have journeyed with the McCanns and their spokespersons from 'jemmied shutters' to wanting the case re-viewed (as a pre-cursor to its being re-opened). And still they are no nearer telling the truth.


    With thanks to the brilliant mccannfiles

    http://www.mccannfiles.com/id232.html


    http://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t1969-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics-by-dr-martin-roberts#49409

    Goncalo / Cipriano

    The rest of this article is on The Madeleine Foundation website: http://www.madeleinefoundation.org.uk/ - look under 'Articles'.


    15. The contradictions in the evidence of Leonor Cipriano - and a summary of her 16 lies in court

    In the court, Leonor Cipriano sometimes ‘remembered’ and sometimes ‘forgot’. Mostly, she simply fabricated stories or told outright lies, as she has done for years

    For example, she said that she had seen who had assaulted her, but later she denied this.

    During the investigation into Joana Cipriano’s disappearance, Ms Cipriano said that she had been tortured and assaulted ‘more than once’, but now, during the trial, she stated it that it happened only once. Furthermore, she said she knew the time of the beating - around 8.00pm - because she had looked at the clock in the room where she had been beaten. However, during the trial, she was asked to describe the room and did so without referring to any clock.

    There were several major contradictions from Leonor, but one of her sentences has stuck in everyone’s memory. “I don’t remember having made any confession”, she told the court on one occasion.

    It is understood that no confession is admissible in court in Portugal unless the defendant repeats it in open court. It is understood that Leonor Cipriano did repeat her confession in her trial for murder in 2005, this making it admissible. So what made her change her mind, over two years later?

    Leonor Cipriano originally said she had been beaten up by several PJ inspectors, but when asked to pick them out of a line-up, she could not. She then changed her story to say that the PJ inspectors ‘must have arranged for a person or persons unknown to come into the police station and beat her’.

    She then changed her mind again to say she was sure she was beaten by the PJ - but she claims she cannot now identify them because a bag was placed over her head during the beating. She first of all said it was a blue plastic bag, but soon afterwards she changed this to saying it was ‘green or blue’.

    Leonor Cipriano had never previously said that Gonçalo Amaral had personally laid a hand on her - until the court hearing in Faro. Indeed, he had ‘only’ been charged with the Portuguese equivalent of ‘criminal malfeasance’ for the alleged actions of men under his command. Yet, in the Faro court, Leonor Cipriano now changed her story once again and said, yes, Amaral had personally hit her after all. However, there was no evidence given to the court that Gonçalo Amaral was even present when she was being questioned.

    In her original statement, Leonor Cipriano said she knew the time the assaults on her took place because there was a clock on the wall in the room in the police station, and that it was approximately from 6.00pm to 8.00pm. Yet three of the named PJ inspectors accused of torturing her were not even in the building at that time; they did not sign into the police station until 8.00 pm on the day in question.

    Leonor Cipriano at one point said that she was forced to kneel on broken glass. But there appears to be no record of damage to her knees or legs that would be consistent with such a serious incident.

    A major question mark from Leonor Cipriano’s evidence was to explain how anyone, suffering the kind injuries that Leonor Cipriano now claimed she has suffered (namely being beaten about the body, head and face for two hours), did not suffer additional injuries such as cracked ribs or bruises all over her body, cracked, broken, or knocked-out teeth, a split lip, broken or bloody nose, or bruises below the level of her cheekbones?

    According to press reports, when asked by the Prison Governor at Odemira Prison to explain her injuries, Leonor Cipriano did not implicate anyone in the police. We must ask then under what circumstances the Prison Director asked her Chief Prison Officer to change the account Ms Cipriano originally provided.

    When she was asked in court to give the names of the people she was accusing, Leonor Cipriano had to pull a piece of paper out of her purse to do so. One would think that four years after she claimed to have been tortured, she would have had the time to learn the names of those who she says assaulted her. It begs the question of who wrote that list. Did someone else write it out for her?

    A summary of Leonor Cipriano’s 15 lies in Court
    Here’s a convenient summary of at least 15 of the lies Leonor Cipriano told in court:

    (1) She said that she had seen who had assaulted her, but later she denied this.

    (2) During the investigation into her allegation, she said that she had been assaulted ‘more than once’, but now, during the trial, she stated it that it happened only once.

    (3) She said she knew the time of the beating - around 8.00pm - but during the hearing described the room she was supposedly beaten and did so without referring to any clock.


    (4) Despite having made a full confession in front of her lawyer and again in her trial for murder in 2005, she told the Faro Court: “I don’t remember having confessed”.

    (5) Leonor Cipriano originally said she had been beaten by PJ inspectors, but when asked to pick them out of a line-up, she could not. She then changed her story to say that the PJ inspectors ‘must have arranged for another person or persons unknown to come into the police station and beat her’.

    (6) She then changed her mind once again again to say she was beaten by the PJ – claiming she cannot identify them because a bag was placed over her head during the beating.

    (7) Ms Cipriano had never previously alleged that Gonçalo Amaral had personally laid a hand on her until the Court hearing in Faro. Yet, in the Faro court, Leonor Cipriano changed her story once again and now said that Gonçalo Amaral personally hit her during the beating.

    (8) The photographer who took pictures of Leonor Cipriano’s injuries said he had taken the photographs immediately after the injuries had occurred and that he was there ‘during the afternoon and with daylight’. Yet Ms Cipriano had claimed that the photographs had been taken ‘at night, in a room without light’.

    (9) She said that at one point during the beating she was forced to kneel on broken glass. But there was no record of damage to her knees or legs that would be consistent with such a serious incident.

    (10) When originally asked by the Prison Governor at Odemira Prison to explain her injuries, Leonor Cipriano did not implicate anyone in the police.

    (11) When Ms Cipriano was asked in Court to give the names of the people she was accusing, Leonor Cipriano had to pull a piece of paper out of her purse.

    (12) It was clear from the evidence that the beating of Leonor Cipriano took place during the 48 hours after she confessed to murdering her daughter. This is consistent with the reliable reports circulating that Leonor Cipriano was assaulted by fellow prisoners only after they got to learn that she had confessing to her appalling crime.

    (13) She denied that she ever had a female lawyer. However, she did have a female lawyer present when she made her original confession.

    (14) She said that there was a blue plastic bag over her head, but soon afterwards she changed this to saying it was ‘green or blue’.

    (15) She denied that she was visited in prison by her lawyer, Mr Aragão Correia, on 30 October 2008, during the trial. In this respect, she was contradicted by Mr Aragão Correia himself.

    16. False evidence by the authorites to help frame Gonçalo Amaral

    The weakness of the prosecution case was clear from early on in the trial of Gonçalo Amaral and his colleagues.

    The sequence of events leading up to the injuries sustained by Leonor Cipriano were soon established. Leonor Cipriano had apparently made her confession to the Polícia Judiciária at a police station on 13 October 2004. She had then been taken to prison. What was clear was that the main injuries she suffered to her face and knees, quite probably caused by a fellow inmate, aor a group of them, were probably sustained a day or two afterwards, certainly no earlier than 13 October, i.e. after she made her confession to the police. The date of the assault on Ms Cipriano was between 14 October 2004 and the date she was seen by the Consultant Prison Doctor, namely 18 October. The most probably dates of any assault were on 14 and 15 October

    The Consultant Prison Doctor who was giving medical evidence to support the alleged torture of Leonor Cipriano contradicted herself on one important detail. A report written on the 18 October 2004 mentioned no lesions to the knees of Joana’s mother, who didn’t complain about any either. Yet on 29 October, she requested an X-ray to be performed on these lesions.

    According to the doctor, when she observed Leonor Cipriano on 18 October 2004, she presented lesions on several parts of her body. She had ‘red swollen eyes’, ‘the left eye shut’, and ‘minor cuts on both knees, superficial but symmetrical’. She also presented lesions to her back, to her chest and on her arms. But on 18 October the doctor reported no ‘lesions’ on her knees.

    Evidence was then heard by the court that the Prison Governor of Odemira Prison, where Ms Cipriano was being held, had ordered the Chief Prison Officer to materially alter a report about Leonor Cipriano’s health. Yet, said Mr Carlos Anjos, speaking on behalf of Gonçalo Amaral - it was a ‘stupefying fact’ that [instead of the Prison Governor being on trial] the person on trial for allegedly falsifying a document was António Cardoso, one of the four detectives.

    There was a reference to Ms Cipriano having suffered injuries before she arrived at the prison. A former prison guard of Odemira Prison, Ana Paula Teixeira, was heard during the trial on a video-conference link. She claimed that Leonor Cipriano had arrived at the prison with injuries. Leonor Cipriano, she explained, had suffered her injuries while she fell down some stairs at the police station where she was interrogated.

    Her evidence co-incided with that of social worker Adélia Palma. Ms Palma explained during a later court session during the trial that Leonor Cipriano had told her that she had been assaulted during the questioning she was subject to at the Polícia Judiciária and that the detectives had ‘ordered’ her to say that she fell. But what is the value of any evidence coming from the lips of Leonor Cipriano?

    However, whatever these injuries might have been, the clear evidence heard by the court was that Leonor Cipriano suffered her main set of injuries between 14 and 18 October whilst she was already in prison.

    One of Leonor Cipriaon’s many lies in court was her denial that she was visited in prison by her lawyer, Mr Aragão Correia, on 30 October, during the trial. Gonçalo Amaral’s lawyer, António Cabrita, had asked for Leonor Cipriano to be heard again, as he wanted to clarify what he referred to as ‘a lie’ about this visit - either by her, or by her lawyer. Cabrita referred to an article that was published in a national newspaper, where Mr Aragão Correia admitted to having visited Ms Cipriano in prison on the night of the 30 October, after she had been giving evidence on Day One of the trial. He had told the press that it was necessary to visit her to ‘calm her down’ as she had been ‘very nervous’ following questions earlier that day from the Polícia Judiciária’s lawyers.

    Yet before that newspaper article appaeraed, during the second day’s session, when António Cabrita had asked Leonor Cipriano if she had received any visits at the prison, she replied that she had not. “So someone is lying”, said Cabrita, merely stating the obvious.

    A further contradiction between Leonor Capriano’s evidence and that of others occurred when the photographer who took the photographs of Ms Cipriano’s injuries in the prison reported that he was called immediately after the injuries were sustained and that he took the pictures ‘during the afternoon and with daylight’. But Ms Cipriano had claimed that the photographs had been taken ‘at night, in a room without light’.

    There was further consternation when another official admitted that the prison had destroyed the photographs taken of Leonor Cipriano’s knees because ‘the alleged injuries to her knees were not very visible’.

    Given these examples of lies, contradictions and attempts to falsify documents and cover up certain matters, it was scarcely surprising that some of the four jurors asked a lot of questions of the witnesses during the trial. One interesting statement made by Mr Aragão Correia to the court was that British Police officers had been ‘investigating’ Gonçalo Amaral. But with Aragão Correia’s history of outright lies, fabrications and changes of story, this might well have been yet another fabrication by him. He did not of course give details of their names, ranks, collar numbers or their places of employment. It would be a truly sensational revelation if it could ever be proved that any part of the British security services had actually been used to investigate Gonçalo Amaral with a view to trying to get any ‘dirt’ on him.

    It was speculated in some quarters that it was just possible that the case against Gonçalo Amaral and his fellow detectives had been brought by Portugal’s equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service in order to clear Amaral and to prove him innocent. It was thought that the country’s chief prosecutor had a good relationship with the Portuguese Police and perhaps had allowed the case to be brought, perhaps anticipating that Leonor Cipriano’s allegations would be exposed as bogus. But the eventual outcome of the case - Gonçalo Amaral’s conviction for allegedly ‘filing a false report’ (which we shall come to in a moment) - suggests more that this was a political trial wholly intended by the relevant authorities to destroy Gonçalo Amaral’s reputation.

    The British press’s response to the trial of Gonçalo Amaral was of no little interest. The facts about Marcos Aragão Correia’s direct links with Método 3 - and thereby to the McCanns - were at least partially uncovered during the hearing, but the British press were silent about it. On the contrary, the alleged misconduct of Gonçalo Amaral was mentioned, alongside endless pictures of Leonor Cipriano with black eyes, clearly linking Mr Amaral to them as the alleged perpetrator or author of the beating she had evidently suffered. So much so, in fact, that many people I have spoken to in England seriously believe that it was Amaral himself who was the one who personally beat up Ms Cipriano. Such is the power of sustained disinformation circulated by the once-respected mass media of Britain.

    Let us at this point summarise the most important information to have come out of the trial of Amaral and his colleagues. We now know about, for example:

    (1) The involvement of Método 3 in the case against Mr Amaral, given their close association with Mr Aragão Correia and their having been employed by the McCanns and Brian Kennedy

    (2) The apparent funding of Aragão Correia by Método 3 - though clearly we do not yet know the full extent of this

    (3) The claim that the Prison Governor ordered the alteration of an initial report of the beating of Leonor Cipriano and of a medical report

    (4) The alleged special treatment that Leonor Cipriano was accorded by the Prison Governor after the beating

    (5) The fact that Leonor Cipriano appears to have been beaten some time after her confession, probably by fellow inmates who might have learned about her confession and felt it their duty to punish her for it

    (6) The dirty and possibly illegal proposed deal to give the four detectives light sentences in order to ‘get’ Gonçalo Amaral.

    A French journalist who has closely covered the Madeleine McCann case, Duarte Levy, appeared on TV in October 2008 and claimed to have interviewed an ex-convict who was serving a sentence in the same prison as Leonor Cipriano at the time of the events. When asked if she knew who had beaten Leonor Cipriano in prison, the female ex-convict is said to have replied to Mr Levy: “Of course I know. I was one of them”. That account seems far more credible than what Leonor Cipriano asks us to believe, namely that four police detectives, none of whose identities she can recall, beat her up.

    The trial of Mr Amaral suited the agenda of the McCann Team and their chief public relations adviser, Clarence Mitchell. Right from the early days of the hunt for Madeleine, the McCanns and their advisers had criticised the Portuguese police, first for mounting what they said was an ineffective search for Madeline, and later for wrongly and cruelly accusing them of having been involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. At every opportunity, Clarence Mitchell, the man who had been at the head of the government’s mission to influence the output of the mass media, attacked the Portuguese police in general and Gonçalo Amaral in particular.

    He had been Head of the ‘Media Monitoring Unit’ at the Central Office of Information on the day Madeleine had been reported ‘missing’. He later boasted that in that capacity he directed a 40-strong team whose job it was ‘to control what comes out in the media’. It was perfect for the McCann Team for Mr Amaral to be repeatedly referred to in the British press as a ‘disgraced cop’. [NOTE: At the time of concluding this essay, Mr Mitchell had been appointed to a top role in the Conservative Party’s General Election campaign, as right-hand man to Andy Coulson, the Head of the Conservative Party’s public relations department and, of course, the former Editor of the News of the World. Mr Mitchell was clearly and prominently visible in the background of a 2-minute pre-election speech by party leader David Cameron released on to YouTube on 4 April]


    Every time bad news about the Portuguese Police’s investigation surfaced, the McCanns and their public relations team would be quick to seize on ‘corruption’, ‘beatings’ etc. that were supposedly ‘rife’ in the Portuguese judicial system. It would surely invalidate Mr Amaral’s conclusions in his book if the person who had disgracefully smeared them by making them suspects was a man who could be shown to have a track record of corruption and brutality. That would in turn confirm that the McCanns and their ‘Tapas 9’ friends were absolutely correct not to co-operate with Mr Amaral and his team. It would provide justification for the McCanns hot-footing it out of Portugal - despite promising to stay there ‘until Madeleine was found’ – as soo nas thy were made ‘arguidos’. It would also be a good excuse for refusing to go back for a reconstruction of events on 3 May 2007, as the Portuguese Police requested of the McCanns and their Tapas 9 friends in early 2008.

    As one person on one of the many Madeleine McCann forums pointed out: “Odd, isn't it? ‘McCann friends get out-of-court payout from newspaper’ is front-page news in several national papers, while ‘McCann private detectives accused of paying lawyer to frame Maddie cop’ doesn't get a mention. Clearly I have no nose for what makes a powerful front-page story”.

    Finally, we might conclude this section with a translated report from the newspaper 24Horas published on 30 October 2008:

    QUOTE

    LEONOR’S LAWYER RECEIVES MONEY FROM THE MCCANNS
    30 October 2008 - by Luís Maneta


    Aragão Correia confirms that he was supported with money from Maddie’s parents:

    The lawyer claims he is defending Joana’s mother for free and that the McCanns paid him to ‘investigate’ Gonçalo Amaral

    “Was Dr Gonçalo Amaral in charge?”; “Was Dr Gonçalo Amaral present?”; “Did Dr Gonçalo Amaral hit you?”. Gonçalo Amaral, Gonçalo Amaral, Gonçalo Amaral - this seems to be the obsession of Leonor Cipriano’s defence lawyer during the trial in which Joana’s mother makes claims agaisnt five Judiciária inspectors.

    Three policemen stand accused of torture: Pereira Cristóvão, Leonel Marques and Paulo Marques Bom. But Leonor’s lawyer, Marcos Aragão Correia, has pointed his guns at Gonçalo Amaral, who in this process stands accused of false testimony and ‘omission of denunciation’ [failing to file a report on an incident].


    “This doesn’t look like a trial in the Joana case but rather one in the Maddie case”, says a source that is connected to the defence of the former co-rdinator of the PJ in Portimão, who headed the investigations into the disappearance of both children and became a sort of ‘public enemy No. 1’ for the McCann couple.


    “A possible condemnation of Gonçalo Amaral in this process may make it easier for the English to prosecute the Portuguese state”, the source says.

    They have paid the expenses

    ”When confronted by 24Horas with suspicions about his connection to the Maddie case, Marcos Aragão confirmed that he was already paid by persons that are connected to the McCanns. “They haven’t paid me honoraries but rather expenses due to transportation, lodging and food, in order to interview João Cipriano [Leonor Cipriano’s brother] in prison”, the lawyer explained, adding that the purpose of the conversation with Mr Cipriano was ‘to analyse the procedures of Amaral as a PJ investigator’.

    “Following the investigation - which originated froma report from the Association Against Exclusion through Development (ACED), founded by Aragão Correia himself (!) - Aragão Correia says that he accepted to represent Leonor Cipriano without charging one cent. ‘I accepted this case for humanitarian reasons only. I am not receiving any honoraries’, the lawyer asserted, claiming that the ‘attacks’ against Gonçalo Amaral are linked to Leonor Cipriano’s strategy in this case: ‘It’s not an obsession. I can’t insist on the other arguidos because she has not identified them’.

    “Yesterday’s session at the Court in Faro was marked by a new contradiction from the plaintiff. On Monday, Leonor Cipriano had guaranteed that Gonçalo Amaral did not watch the questioning during which she allegedly suffered abuse in order to make her confess to her daughter’s death. Yesterday, Joana’s mother corrected her version: “Gonçalo Amaral beat me”. When questioned by the judge, she said she had “recovered my memory after watching a report on television”.



    http://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t1968-how-goncalo-amaral-was-convicted-by-the-lies-of-the-murderess-of-her-own-child-leonor-cipriano-and-how-marcos-correia-said-the-mccanns-were-paying-him-see-passages-highlighted-in-red#49361

    Wednesday, January 12, 2011

    MADDIE MCCANN POLICE EMAIL - PAEDO RING ORDER FOR HER. This report 3. 4 2008...I now believe the 'Wider Agenda'was on its way...Washington and England trying for an American 'Amber Alert' with the McCanns as ambassadors for Europe which explains John McCann giving up his day job. John McCann calling in a few favours, and Gerry the mouthpiece....they almost made it ...microchipping our children not a conspiracy but a fact, was very much on the agenda.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/2512536/Madeleine-McCann-was-snatched-by-paedophile-ring-to-order.html

    Madeleine McCann 'was snatched by paedophile ring to order'

    British police were told that Madeleine McCann was snatched by an international paedophile ring which photographed her three days before she vanished, police files have disclosed.

    This is the full email sent by an intelligence officer on the Met's vice squad on March 4 this year to counterparts in the Portuguese and Leicestershire police
    By Caroline Gammell in Portimao 9:13PM BST 06 Aug 2008
    According to an email sent by the Metropolitan Police a child abduction ring based in Belgium placed an order for a "young girl".

    Three-year-old Madeleine was spotted while on holiday in Portugal by someone connected to the gang who took a picture of her.

    The photograph was sent back to Belgium where the paedophile ring agreed that she should be abducted, the email states.

    Three days later on May 3rd last year Madeleine was taken from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve while her parents ate at a nearby restaurant.

    The astonishing revelation supports Kate and Gerry McCann's long-held theory that their eldest child may have been taken by a child smuggling ring. Related Articles

    Senior police officer suspended over fraud allegations 11 Dec 2010
    Madeleine McCann's parents consider Crimewatch reconstruction 06 Aug 2008
    Text of Kate McCann's letter to Paulo Rebelo 06 Aug 2008
    Madeleine sighting 07 Aug 2008
    Missing Madeleine: 'I'm Maddy and that's not my mummy' 06 Aug 2008
    Gerry and Kate learn of Amsterdam sighting 05 Aug 2008

    The email, sent by an intelligence officer on the Met's vice squad on March 4 this year to counterparts in the Portuguese and Leicestershire police, marks a significant development in the case of the missing girl.

    Just last month Portuguese police closed their investigation and cleared the McCanns of any involvement in their daughter's disappearance.

    The email was revealed for the first time in police files made public this week.

    The Met Police were tipped by an anonymous source, the files showed.

    Met officer John Shord wrote the email to Leicestershire Police on March 4 which was passed on to Operation Task – the British end of the investigation into Madeleine McCann.

    It said: "Intelligence suggests that a paedophile ring in Belgium made an order for a young girl three days before Madeleine McCann was taken.

    "Somebody connected to this group saw Maddie, took a photograph of her and sent it to Belgium. The purchaser agreed that the girl was suitable and Maddie was taken." DC John Hughes, from Leicestershire Police, forwarded the email to the Policia Judiciaria (PJ) at Portimao in the Algarve on April 21, the files showed.

    The next day the email was sent to Ricardo Paiva, one of the three Portuguese police officers leading the investigation.

    On April 28, Portuguese police faxed the information to Interpol in Lisbon and asked them to investigate it as a matter of urgency.

    Interpol replied on May 23, passing on all information gathered from its bureaus in London, Brussels, Germay and Finland.

    On May 27, Interpol in Lisbon sent an urgent fax to Portuguese police asking for more information, but an undated return fax told them they had all the information that there was.

    The email emerged in volume 14, appendix five, of the vast Portuguese police dossier into the closed investigation which was released to the public on Monday.

    Paulo Rebelo, the head of the police investigation into Madeleine, ordered that the information be placed in the case file.

    The inquiry was then shelved on July 21, less than two months after Interpol was told there was no further information about the paedophile ring.

    Belgium has featured in the case already. There was an alleged sighting last August in Tongeren on the Dutch Belgian border but it was later ruled out.

    The country was at the centre of one of the most notorious paedophile investigations of recent years which saw Marc Dutroux jailed for life in 2004 after being convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering young girls.

    He was found guilty of kidnapping and raping six girls, killing two of them and causing the deaths of two others. The case surrounding Dutroux, 47, an unemployed electrician and a convicted paedophile, shocked Europe in the mid-1990s.

    Mr and Mrs McCann, from Rothley in Leicestershire, have spent the last 15 months trying to find their daughter who disappeared from her family's apartment in Praia da Luz last May.

    For 10 months the couple had to battle to clear their own names of suspicion after they were named as suspects.

    Only now, is a picture emerging of what may have happened.

    It destroys the PJ's theory that the couple accidentally killed Madeleine and then tried to dispose of her body. The couple’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “Their private investigators will be pursuing this line as an absolute priority to establish if it has been fully investigated and properly ruled out.

    “They have got some of the information already from their lawyers and investigators and they are waiting to hear from them what is legitimate, what is promising and what is not.

    “They are frustrated by the delays and the mistakes that were made. They have learned an awful lot about this kind of thing and God forbid she has fallen foul of any of these types.” A friend of Mr and Mrs McCann added: “Trafficking into Belgium forms a very strong part of their investigation as does trafficking into north Africa. “There is definitive hard evidence that this is very much alive and happening and they have looked into the fact that someone was targeting children and they may well have been stealing to order.”

    A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “Unsubstantiated information was received by CO14 relating to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

    “This was passed on to Leicestershire Police on 4th March 2008. The information was further discussed with Leicestershire Police verbally and all possible lines of enquiry were conducted.

    “Leicestershire Police passed the information on to the Portuguese authorities.”

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    Maddie police email - photo was taken of Maddie, sent to purchaser in Belgium who agreed, so she was taken.