Ik vind het interessant om ook niet-Britse kranten te lezen, ene Li op het Mirror-forum neemt altijd de moeite deze te vertalen, meestal Portugese en soms Spaanse online-kranten. Omdat het overzichten van dit jaar zijn is het de moeite waard deze te posten en het is weer eens wat anders dan dat (vaak) geneuzel van de Britse pers.
Uit Spanje, El Pais - 30/12/2007
The absence of Maddie The whole world shook for months with the case of Madeleine McCann, the English girl that disappeared in Portugal. And the mystery continues.
LOLA GALÁN 30/12/2007
Unlike other actors in the year 2007, what makes Madeleine McCann a major story is her absence. Her mysterious disappearance. It is not Maddie herself, but the vacuum she has left. The bed undone in the room of the apartment 5A of the Ocean Club resort in southern Portugal, where she was allegedly abducted on May 3. The intact bed in the room to which she has not returned, at the family home in Rothley, an affluent suburb of Leicester in central England. Her absence is the one that has turned into celebrities a handful of people who revolve around the story of a girl who was not yet four years old when she vanished. A story that, in all likelihood, will not be solved.
Madeleine's case is a paradigm of the power of image that the media disseminate and explain. In some ways, Maddie is only a virtual character, as well as her parents Kate and Gerry have been during 2007.
Far away from the case now, the McCanns, both aged 39 years, he a cardiologist and she a GP, have started to regain their appearance as a real couple, parents of twins, Sean and Amelie, aged two. Although the return to reality will be slow.
Both are part of the Madeleine's case and will be for a long time. Their image will be associated with the Ocean Club, the British tourist resort in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve,from where the girl disappeared. And the tapas bar where they dinned with seven other friends, on the night of May 3, while the children were sleeping alone in the apartment. And the gigantic media campaign orchestrated around the alleged abduction. It all began that same night. For some reason,the news of the disappearance of Madeleine arrived to the Sky News chain in London before the police station in the neighbouring Portimao. The tabloids were mobilized immediately. Hundreds of flights to Faro, the city closest to Praia da Luz were reserved. The McCanns received the immediate support of their country. Around them a support network was mounted,with the British ambassador in Lisbon, Clarence Mitchell, and a psychologist. The sisters Gerry, Philomena and Trish, and the brother in law Sandy Cameron mobilized in Scotland. The Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, now Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is interested in the drama of the couple.
At the same time, the computer expert Calum McRae created a website to serve as the interactive contact with thousands of people interested in the fate of Maddie, and willing to contribute money to fund the search. The TV presenter and member of the Conservative Party, Esther McVey, a friend of Kate, promoted the establishment of the ad hoc foundation behind the website, which raised in a short time one million pounds (1.37 million euros). And thus began the gigantic campaign "seeking Madeleine."
The McCanns did not rest. They made press conferences, public appearances, started a series of trips to various countries in Europe and North Africa with the photo of their daughter in hand. They launched the biggest campaign of proselytising that history has seen. In theory, they just wanted that people become familiar with the face of their daughter and be able to recognize her in the hands of their hypothetical captors . In fact, what they want is that people believe in their history, show solidarity with their grief and share their faith in the return of Maddie.
For four months,the McCanns kept up their role as shattered parents, but in Portugal the doubts begin to appear. The inspector Gonçalo Amaral, who headed the investigation into the disappearance of the girl, had his own theory. A thesis that was diametrically opposed to the assumption of a kidnapping. The Portuguese press echoed these theories. Rumors were like a growing river, rising its volume, until the 7th of September when the case suffered a turnaround. Kate McCann first, and then her husband, were included in the register of suspects (arguidos). Inspector Amaral believed that the girl died on the day of her disappearance at the apartment 5A and that the parents had something to do with her death.
Kate McCann supported stoically interrogations of 16 hours, her husband, too. The police said that the two dogs brought from England, specialized in detecting smell of blood and cadavers had reacted positively when they smelled the Renault Scenic rented by the McCanns three weeks after their daughter disappeared. In fact in the car remnants of "biological fluids have been collected." The cadaver dog detected something in Kate's clothes. By then, the McCanns campaign team had already reacted. Kate went to the police station accompanied by the best Portuguese lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu. Their media advisers claimed that the couple were calm and had nothing to hide.They were to remain in Portugal until their daughter was found.
They didn't. Unexpectedly, on Sunday, September 9 they took a plane to England. The Portuguese authorities had been informed, the police, too. But the return seemed like an escape, even though the spokespersons of the family denied this. Kate and Gerry will return to Portugal as soon as the judge demands,they assured. Once at their home in Rothley, however, the McCanns behaved in a manner that showed precisely the opposite. They called the lawyer Michael Caplan, famous for avoiding extradition to Spain of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and an expert in preserving reputations, Angus McBride.
Their judicial and social situation is complicated. The huge publicity turned into notoriety. People who donated money to Madeleine's Website now opposed that their parents used that money to defend themselves. Many of those who applauded them were now to look at them with suspicion, almost hatred. Others, particularly in the UK, kept their opinion. The McCanns are innocent. They have to be innocent. Even Downing Street seems to share this sentiment. It seems that the Portuguese police are trying to crucify them. Clarence Mitchell is on their side. Now, in a private capacity. His salary is paid by an anonymous tycoon who believes in the McCanns. The owner of the Virgin group, Richard Branson,also publicly supported and contributed 100,000 pounds to their defence.
What is no longer so clear is whether the couple need to defend themselves of anything at this stage. The Police investigation seems stalled. Amaral complained in a newspaper that their British colleagues favour the McCanns, and was removed from his post on October 9. A new inspector, Paulo Rebelo, an expert on drug trafficking, took charge of the case that now seems to depend on a single evidence: the analysis of the "biological fluids" found in the Renault Scenic of the McCanns. The remains are in the hands of specialists of the Forensic Science Laboratory of Birmingham. And their verdict will be unchallenged. How can one doubt the findings of one of the most renowned forensic centres when it is British? The problem is that the results did not arrive. When finally they arrived to the hands of the police, in early December nobody remembered them. The news that the tests had not been conclusive barely received attention. The case remains in a state of vegetative life. There are inspectors in charge, but the investigation is not progressing.
The McCanns have returned almost to normality, although still looking for Maddie. They even hired the services of a Spanish detectives agency, Metodo 3. The impression, however, is that since long time ago their decisions are dictated more by the need to clean up their image than that of parents in their faith in recovering their daughter. Meanwhile, the vast audience without new facts for over eight months is looking for new stories, resigned to the fact that Madeleine's case may have no end.
http://www.elpais.com/art(...)1230elpdmgrep_18/Tes------------------------------------------------------------------
Uit Portugal Jornal de Notícias 30/12/2007
Abduction, fatal accident or perfect crime? Nuno Miguel Maia
Probably no event in Portugal will have had so much impact, and for so long, in the entire world as the mysterious disappearance of Madeleine McCann, May 3, in Praia da Luz, Algarve. Even today, after almost eight months, it is rare the day that stories about the case are not published. However, almost everything remains unclear. What happened that night? The girl is dead or was kidnapped? What is the real involvement of parents? And if it is dead, where is the body?
The "invasion" of the British media - and by trawling the media from almost all countries - put Portugal in the news even in the more hidden corner of the world. The monumental media campaign mounted by the parents, with the objective support of the British Government at the highest level, led to hundreds of tracks and sightings of the child, then with three years old, which would be, after all, false.
But the drama surrounding the fate of the girl with the mark in the eye, increased particularly at the end of July, beginning of August,when the investigation began to point to the parents, doctors Kate and Gerry McCann, as possible suspects in a probably accidental death. And why? Because two English "springer spaniel dogs," unique in the world, found traces of blood and the smell of a corpse in the apartment where the family spent holidays. The combined evidence thus led to believe that Maddie have died on the spot from where it was said she has been kidnapped - and the corpse was hidden.
Meanwhile, a wave of solidarity with the couple reached gigantic proportions. It was constituted a fund of millions of euros to help the search for Madeleine and even the Pope received the McCanns . But with the parents as suspects, could we be facing a huge fraud?
The key to the mystery seemed to be in the samples of biological fluids and hair collected in a car rented by the couple and sent to Birmingham, England, which operates one of the most sophisticated laboratories in the world. However, the results were not conclusive, raising the possibility that the vestiges, after all, belong to the family.
However, as soon as the first tests were known, Kate and Gerry were interrogated and made arguidos by the Judiciary Police. The silence in the face of questions regarding the traces collected by the dogs and the researchers raised even more suspicions about a couple who, from the beginning, had a very professional relationship with the media - controlled by press advisers linked to the British Government.
This fact, combined with government contacts and Gerry's links to the English Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, transformed a police plot into a political case. Even the Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Socrates, acknowledged that the case was the subject of conversation with his counterpart Brown.
In question was - and still is - the image of the Portuguese Justice and the effectiveness of the criminal investigation. Even the researchers, and their lives outside the investigation, have been scrutinized by the media. What contributed to the removal of one of the coordinators of the research, Gonçalo Amaral from the case, , and the replacement by Paulo Rebelo, one of the senior ranks of the PJ. Now, the investigation is back to verify all the hypothesis of explanation about what happened that night. But, so far,till now it seems that we are facing a perfect crime.
http://jn.sapo.pt/2007/12(...)_crime_perfeito.html(
Justice for Madeleine) < vernieuwd > Kate McCann:
"A small window of opportunity"