Maddy, nieuwe verhoren van de Tapas 7.

quote:

Op dinsdag 1 april 2008 17:15 schreef kahaarin het volgende:

[..]

http://www.iht.com/articl(...)gal-Missing-Girl.php

Als de McCanns de zaak mogen inzien dan zou je zeggen dat de politie in GB dat ook zou mogen, er is tenslotte een deel van het onderzoek door hen uitgevoerd en de verhoren worden ook door hen afgenomen, zou dit betekenen dat er ook een statement komt van de PJ over de details van deze zaak? Dat hoop ik wel.

quote:

McCanns: Secrecy of Justice up to August If there was no understanding of when the period began to count in September, the secrecy of justice would be lifted in April, but having this agreement the secrecy in the process will only end in August. “In declarations, to the CM, Rogério Alves, lawyer of the McCanns, contradicts the news circulating yesterday in the UK press, according to which the process of the inquiry to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from Praia da Luz, in the 3rd of May of last year, would be available for consultation after the 14th of April.

“It is out of question", said also to the CM a source close to the investigation. According to several English newspapers, quoting an interview of Rogério Alves to the news agency Associated Press [you can read his interview and see the differences in the UK tabloids for yourself], the former bar of the Order of the Lawyers, would have informed his clients that they might try the consultation to the process from the 14th of April. “What I speak with my clients I do not speak in public ", said to the CM Rogério Alves, explaining that "the secrecy will only be lifted in August".

In the count down for the investigations to the friends who were on vacation with the McCanns in the Praia da Luz, predicted to begin day 8 of this month, in Leicester and in the presence of elements of the PJ , Rogério Alves also said to the CM: "I was not notified of anything, neither were my clients." Kate and Gerry, who are preparing a documentary to be exhibited on the 30th of April, about an alert system for missing children, might not be, for the moment, questioned by the police. Source: Correio da Manhã

Maybe, and knowing for a fact that Team McCann spin has previously 'modified' what people say, like Mr. Alípio Ribeiro comments, and others, Mr. Rogério Alves should take the advice given to Hugo Chávez by His Majesty Juan Carlos, the King of Spain: ¿Por qué no te callas? [Why don't you Shut Up?] (dat zei de koning van Spanje idd tegen de Venezolaanse president Hugo Chávez: "Hou je waffel eens dicht." telegraaf.nl)

Yesterday, once again spinning, Clarence Mitchell had this to say:

Clarence Mitchell, the couple’s spokesman, welcomed the lawyer’s comments and called for the arguido status to be lifted. Mr Mitchell said: “We would hope that the police will do the decent and proper thing and open up the files."

“I would go further than that, and say once they have completed the interviews with the friends, they should go back to Portugal and assess the evidence and eliminate Kate and Gerry and allow everyone once again to concentrate on the search for Madeleine.”

"Kate and Gerry and their friends have long expected this visit by Portuguese police officers." "It comes as no surprise to them at all that some reports in the Portuguese papers in the last few days have been speculating about the arrival date."

" I am not in a position to confirm any dates or give any details about the re-interviewing of the friends and all matters will have to go to Leicestershire police to be dealt with." "However, Kate and Gerry and their friends welcome the police interviews. The friends are more than happy to co-operate fully, as are Kate and Gerry, although in this case Kate and Gerry will not be re-interviewed."

"This has not been requested but Kate and Gerry would have agreed to answer any questions had they police wished to put anything to them. "There were some reports from Portugal last week that police were not going the question Kate and Gerry because they thought they would not co-operate. This is utterly ridiculous and completely baseless."

"Kate and Gerry and their friends see this as an important chance to help the police." " We hope that the police will realise that there is no evidence to link Kate and Gerry with Madeleine's disappearance in any way and that they will be rapidly eliminated from the inquiry and the arguido status, which was imposed too hastily as the head of the Portuguese admitted, will be lifted as soon as possible"

Source: The UK Tabloids, Sky News aka the McCann's Media.

quote:

Looking at the most recent news – the fact that the Tapas Group had access to the content of the rogatory letters and part of the police files about the investigation of Madeleine’s disappearance – I must say that this shouldn’t be a surprise, for those who have been following this case.

On January 2008, Clarence Mitchell revealed that “British police and child protection officers do not suspect Madeleine McCann's parents of involvement in her disappearance”. And he was clear about the source of this information, when he said: “I have also had briefings privately from the police and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre that also gave me complete reassurance that the authorities, in this country certainly, are treating this as a case of rare stranger abduction, as they call it."

At the end of November 2007, the seven friends that were having diner at the Tapas restaurant, with Gerry and Kate McCann, met for the first time after the events at Praia da Luz. It was an emotional meeting, as the British Press referred, two weeks after the meeting took place, at a hotel in Rothley. But it wasn’t only the group of friends that were present. Some of the advisers of the McCann family were there, also.

It’s good to remember that on January 2008, the Foreign Secretary confirmed that he “has communicated with the McCann family on a number of occasions. However any further details relating to this have been withheld under Section 36 (2) (c) of the FOIA - information which, if disclosed, would or would be likely to, prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs. Section 36 is a qualified exemption and therefore a public interest test to determine whether or not the information should be released had to be applied.”

Another strange detail has emerged, on October 2007, on an interview of Alex Woolfall, the Media management crisis expert that was at Praia da Luz 48 hours after Madeleine vanished. He told “The Times” that “he heard no suggestion in the early days that the girl had been snatched. ‘Certainly I did not hear any discussion that this could be a paedophile or an aggravated robbery. All the time I was around it was whether she could have wandered off and had an accident or somebody had actually taken her in, perhaps not with ill-intent.”

But Kate McCann was clear – and in total contradiction – about this subject, in several interviews to British newspapers: 'There wasn't a shadow of a doubt in my mind she'd been taken”, Kate McCann told "The Independent", on August 5th, referring to the moment when she went inside the apartment and realized that Madeleine wasn’t there.

Now, let’s wait and see what course events will take. But going back to the beginning of this case, allow me to quote Piers Morgan, former editor of “News of The World” and “Daily Mirror”: "Nobody I know says they would ever have left three kids aged under four on their own to go out with their mates at night on holiday. NOBODY."

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Op donderdag 3 april 2008 13:02 schreef kahaarin het volgende:

[..]

Dat hebben ze vast al gezien idd, nu nog zorgen dat ze het legaal en officieel mogen gebruiken, die zijn echt wel op de hoogte van alle ins en outs.

Murat was imho op het verkeerde moment op de verkeerde plek, hij is immers helemaal door de mangel gehaald, zijn spullen zijn onderzocht en hij heeft alles netjes terug gekregen, bovendien heeft hij toestemming gekregen om zijn kind te bezoeken, dat krijg je niet als er ook maar de schijn van schuld bestaat in Portugal, waarom denk je dat de McCanns anders met grote spoed en heel plotseling zijn vertrokken uit Portugal terwijl ze eerst nog hadden gezegd dat ze zouden blijven totdat Maddy terug was gevonden, die voelden de bui al hangen.

quote:

British police ready to question 'Tapas Seven' over Madeleine disappearance British police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are to interview more than 30 people who could help to prove that her parents were not involved in her abduction.

The interviews will begin next Tuesday with the first of the seven British friends who were on holiday with the McCanns when Madeleine was reported missing in Portugal. A different couple will be interviewed each day in the presence of Portuguese detectives at the headquarters of Leicestershire Police.

The officers will concentrate on alleged inconsistencies in the timelines of events on May 3. None of the witnesses will be made arguidos (official suspects under Portuguese law) and detectives will not seize evidence or search homes. Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, both doctors from Rothley, Leicestershire, have offered to be reinterviewed but will not be questioned. British officers will then begin interviews with more than two dozen other people who were at the Ocean Club resort in Praia Da Luz on May 3 last year or who were later connected to the case.

The witnesses include other holidaymakers, nannies at the Ocean Club, people who claim to have seen Madeleine being abducted, the psychologist who comforted Kate McCann and the McCanns' official spokesmen, Clarence Mitchell and Justine McGuinness. The list of people to be interviewed has been provided by Kate and Gerry McCann as part of their rights as arguidos to demand that police speak to people who could prove their innocence.

Paulo Rebelo, the chief investigator in the Polícia Judiciária investigation into Madeleine's disappearance, will fly to Britain with two other detectives on Monday. They will stay until Friday to watch the interviews with the so-called “Tapas Seven” who were at a restaurant on the Ocean Club with Mr and Mrs McCann when Madeleine went missing.

Jane Tanner, 36, claimed she saw a man carrying a girl from the McCanns' apartment at about 9.15pm - when another witness says he was outside the flat at the same time but did not see her or the mystery man. Her partner, Dr Russell O'Brien, 36, from Exeter, was away from the group for up to 45 minutes in the period that Madeleine was taken from her bed.

Dr Matthew Oldfield, 37, a hospital consultant from London, and his wife Rachel, 36, a recruitment consultant, were also at the tapas restaurant. David Payne, 41, a cardiovascular researcher from Leicester, was the last person outside the McCann family to see Madeleine. His wife, Fiona, 34, and her mother, Diane Webster, will also be interviewed.

The McCanns' Portuguese lawyers have requested the police case against them be made made public on the eight-month anniversary of the day they were made official suspects. However, detectives can request a three-month extension, as granted in the case of the other official suspect, Robert Murat, in January.

Because of the change in Portuguese law, the court could rule that the eight-month limit actually started in September last year. And the evidence could remain sealed indefinitely if police rule that the case is a major crime, such as international child trafficking.

Mr Murat, 34, has recently returned to Britain to see his five-year-old daughter, Sofia, for the first time since he was made an official suspect in Madeleine's disappearance. Mr Murat, who lives with his mother in a villa about 100 yards from the McCanns' holiday apartment, has strenuously denied any involvement. Police last month returned computers and clothing they had seized during the search of his home in an indication that they no longer believed he was a suspect.

quote:

Op donderdag 3 april 2008 14:36 schreef kahaarin het volgende:

[..]

Als ik de ex van Murat was dan was ik ook niet naar Portugal gekomen, al die pers en detectives die daar rondspoken, het meisje had dan waarschijnlijk alleen maar persfotografen gezien, lijkt me niet echt handig, wel goed dat ze dat niet hebben gedaan, sneu voor haar vader dat ze elkaar bijna een jaar niet irl hebben gezien, lijkt me echt zwaar.

Heb jij ook het gevoel dat bijna iedereen in GB hun adem inhoudt totdat er nieuws komt over de verhoren? Nieuwe feiten en statements is volgens mij waar iedereen op zit te wachten, speculeren is gevaarlijk geworden, alhoewel ik een beetje het gevoel heb dat die claims een vooropgezet plan waren, het Maddyfund was bijna leeg en het zou me niet verbazen dat dmv de contacten die Gerry heeft met de pers via Clarrie er een soort opzetje is gemaakt om daar wat aan te doen.
Wat natuurlijk echt een klap is in het gezicht van de persvrijheid. Yep, allemaal de bek gesnoerd, lijkt potdomme het voormalige Oostblok wel! Het opzetje is wat mij betreft gemaakt door Clarence Mitchell tijdens die LSE-lezing. Ook toen was de bodem van het Madeleine-fonds zichtbaar. Ik hoop het nog mee te maken wát er allemaal aan de hand is want ergens klopt er iets niet, dat alle journo's één kant op kijken, en zo ook de McCanns&Co, naar de andere kant. Nog nooit vertoond.

Wat betreft je andere post, bla, spin, en geruchten, niets nieuws, alleen 'stating the obvious'.

Edit: niets tegen jou persoonlijk, enkel tegen dit "nieuws" Nee, dat weet ik wel hoor!

quote:

McCanns could return to Portugal for anniversary of missing daughter Madeleine Kate and Gerry McCann are poised for a dramatic return to Portugal to mark the first anniversary of their daughter Madeleine's disappearance. The couple are prepared to defy their lawyers and risk arrest in an attempt to revive the search for the four-year-old.

The McCanns, who deny any involvement in her disappearance, were named official suspects – or arguidos – by Portuguese police in September, prompting them to leave Praia da Luz, the resort where Madeleine disappeared, and return to their home in Rothley, Leicestershire.

On Monday, Portuguese detectives will fly into the UK to re-interview the friends – but not the McCanns – at police headquarters in Leicestershire. The outcome will determine whether the couple, both doctors, return to the Algarve.

The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell said today: 'Kate and Gerry are currently deciding whether to return to Portugal. It is being discussed 'Going to Portugal would send out the strongest possible message that Madeleine could still be alive and the search for her should continue. The family feel the focus should be on finding Madeleine.

'Next week's interviews will help in gauging the police attitude. In an ideal world they would not be arguidos and their lawyers have always warned them not to return while they have that status. But they want to be in Praia da Luz for the first anniversary,' he said.

quote:

The key to a Mystery

Paulo Pereira Cristóvão, who had already published ‘A Estrela de Joana’, a bestseller about the case of Joana Cipriano Guerreiro – an investigation in which Mr Cristóvão had been directly involved, as one of the Policia Judiciaria inspectors that helped break the case – recently published a book about the case of Madeleine McCann, titled ‘A Estrela de Madeleine’ or ‘The Star of Madeleine’.

This novel, where fact and fiction are deliberately intertwined, as the author states in the foreword, invites us to reflect upon the various possible theories behind the disappearance of Madeleine. It does reach a conclusion of some sort, while leaving an open door into other solutions. The exploration of several theories is done almost exhaustively, presenting arguments in favour and against several possibilities.

All of this thinking is carried out using the two main characters as ‘vehicles’. Francisco Meireles, a young PJ inspector, and his chief, João Tavares, are fictional characters that we follow through several months of an investigation that is yet to be concluded. The narrative begins on the evening of May 3, 2007, and ends at an undefined point in time, with both colleagues looking out into the deep blue ocean, in Praia da Luz. Throughout the novel, a few real-life persons enter the action – Gonçalo Amaral, Guilhermino Encarnação and Luis Neves, the Policia Judiciaria ‘triad’ that was at the core of the investigation until October, as well as the McCann couple.

For most of us, who have followed the twists and turns of this case attentively, the ‘Star of Madeleine’ does not add any new information. It uses some fictional solutions as a stand-in for what we perceive as the real developments of the investigation. It also becomes obvious that the author is not ready to completely discard Mr Murat from the case, suggesting that there was some prior form of acquaintance between him and the McCanns. This was one of the angles that I personally found most intriguing in the novel, although it is confirmed that absolutely no trace of the missing child’s presence was ever found in or around Casa Liliana.

What does stand out very clearly from this book, is that the author wanted to make a strong defense of the Policia Judiciaria, of its work, and of Portugal and the Portuguese people in general. The book is dedicated to the men and women that serve the PJ, oftentimes with great personal sacrifice, and Mr Cristovão does not hide his sorrow over the non-existent defense that the higher instances of the Policia Judiciaria, and of the Portuguese State made of their judicial police, when confronted with the humiliating and offensive remarks that were published by a significant part of the British press.

In my personal opinion, this is not a masterpiece of literary expertise, but then again, it was never supposed to be. While being an easy read, at little more than 150 pages that are managed on the fly, with a narrative that is fluent and rarely comes to a slow, the most interesting aspect is precisely the ability that the author has to convey the rationale, the train of thought that policemen follow to reach one or another conclusion.

Mr Cristóvão reinforces the notion that professional investigators do not fixate their eyes on one solution, but rather consider several options and work their way through them, eliminating one thread after another, until they remain with one or more lines of investigation that are credible. He states rather clearly that, in the case at hand, it was not the investigators that actively chose to consider the McCanns as suspects and then looked for the evidence to match the theory, but that the evidence pointed the investigators into that direction.

As a matter of fact, if there is some criticism directed at the PJ’s work in this case, it is precisely that the investigators were too slow to respond to their own instincts: that they set their usual way of working aside, to concentrate on one theory – the abduction theory – that was being imposed on them from the outside in. According to this book, there are no doubts left as to the fact that there was active interference from external agents, in this investigation.

After spending many weeks trying to pursue the abduction theory, hitting one dead end after another, there is a turning point in the investigation, with the appearance of Daniel Krugel, a South-African former investigator, followed by the intervention of British sniffer dogs Eddie and Keela. The rest, as it is usually said, is history.

The ‘Star of Madeleine’ is harsh on the McCann couple. While the author does not spend a lot of sentences on Kate and Gerry McCann, the few that are actually dedicated to them, are unsympathetic to say the least. Mrs McCann is portrayed as a cold, tough person, and Mr McCann is pictured as a man who chooses to protect his wife, his remaining children and his way of life, when he is confronted with the deadly result of a domestic accident, rather than taking what the author considers to be the appropriate action.

Towards the end of the book, there is a rather poignant ‘Thank you’ chapter dedicated to Madeleine. The author thanks her for bringing people together over a common cause, and for reminding us of so many other missing children that had slowly but surely slipped into oblivion for the general public.

This is a book that, if nothing else, is clearly written from the heart of a man who cares deeply about children, about his former colleagues at the Policia Judiciaria, and about his home country. It is obviously pro-Portugal, a fact that Mr Cristóvão never makes an effort to hide. It is also obviously pro-Madeleine. Whether it is anti-McCann, is another matter entirely – it is certainly against trying to manipulate public opinion, against trying to interfere with a criminal investigation, and against trying to derail the due course of justice.

Finally, João Tavares leaves his young colleague – and the reader – with a challenge. He mentions a key, a sequence of four numbers that would enable him to win the ‘game’ of Praia da Luz. If you can make anything of the numbers 5, 2, 3 and 1, then you, too, might crack the case of a lifetime.

………………………….

Some snippets from ‘The Star of Madeleine’:

[What the detectives observe when they arrive at Apartment 5A on the night that Madeleine disappeared:] The furniture is impeccably aligned against the walls, as if someone had tried to make as much room as possible, in the centre of the living room. In the bedroom, the bed where the child was sleeping is on the opposite side of the window. Under the window, there is another bed that had not been in use. Whomever entered through the window, would have left foot marks on the bed, which in that position resembled a trap. But that had not happened.

Throughout the entire scene, the twins slept undisturbed. They were eventually carried away into another apartment, and never woke up.

……….

In the meantime, the inspector had been at the Tapas Bar; he had been sitting at the table where the group had also been, and he had talked to the waiters. They had told him that the group usually drank significant amounts of alcohol. On the night that Madeleine disappeared, they had consumed twelve bottles of wine, and some appetizers.

The investigators have gathered informal statements, and they start to compare them. They soon realise that something is wrong. The couple's friends stated that they got up several times to check on the children, while the waiters from the Tapas bar say they did not get up that often at all. But even within the group of friends, there are contradictions.

Two English people, one of them Jane Tanner, say that they saw a man carrying a child that could be the missing infant. The description given by Jane is very vague and carries a factor of doubt, as Gerry and a friend whom he was talking to, standing on the same location as Jane when she passed, saw nobody. The friend confirmed this.

……….

On the last day of July, the intuition of the investigators and the results from Krugel find two powerful allies that confirmed the scenario that had begun to form: the death of Madeleine McCann, on the evening of May 3.

Eddie's handler opens the door to apartment 5A, and lets the dog in, to walk freely as usual. The dog sniffs around, followed by his handler, the policemen, experts from the scientific police, and a video technician, who registers the procedure on tape. At a given moment, in the living room, Eddie signals the presence of a cadaver to his handler. According to the laws of forensics, it's a cadaver that has been in that condition for at least two hours.

On the next day, it is Keela who is put into action. After several minutes sniffing around the house, she detains herself next to a sofa in the living room. The investigators move the sofa aside, and Keela shows them two tiny spots of dry blood: one on the floor, the other one on the wall. The material is collected, and a decision is made, against the opinion of Francisco, and João Tavares. The samples are sent into a lab in Birmingham.

On the next day, early in the morning, Eddie is called back to service, to investigate the surroundings of the apartment. The dog stops here and there, marking a path that is referenced by apartment 5A and the beach of Luz. Without knowing, Eddie has just confirmed Krugel's findings.

……….

These two canines, without knowing it, were at the core of a volcano, when in three separate moments, they "accused" Madeleine's parents of, at least, not saying the whole truth about what happened to their daughter.

First, when they were given plenty of time and space to sniff through Robert Murat's house and all of his belongings, and did not discover anything that could minimally incriminate him.

Second, when they detected the odour of death on the key of the car that they used, which was rented more than twenty days after the little girl went missing. In the same car where they found traces of blood and hair under the spare tire.

Third, when, already in the new house where the couple was staying, Eddie once again smelled the characteristic odour of death on a pair of jeans and on a blouse that belong to Kate. The soft toy that the mother carried with her every time they went out, also presented a smell of death that was detected by the same dog. What the heck do we have here, then? - he thought, intrigued. - Did the parents stage this entire circus to hide the truth?

……….

Francisco continues:

- We went to dinner that evening, leaving our children who had been asleep since 7.30. An hour later, we were sitting at the table, with our friends who had equally left their children asleep in their bedrooms. We left the door unlocked, in case there might be an emergency. At some point, shortly after 9 p.m., the father went to the apartment and did not see his daughter where she had been sleeping, but he thought that she might be in the parents’ bedroom. He did not check if that was the case. Their friend Russell also went to check on his children, but he returned only an hour later, at the time when Kate, the mother, went into apartment 5A and did not find her daughter. Hence the despair… The child had been abducted by some stranger who had entered the bedroom and had taken her. This is it, chief!

João Tavares replies:

- Let’s see: according to the neighbour upstairs, mother and daughter had been yelling at each other. It seems that the child was hyperactive. The parents, despite the fact that they are doctors with three small children, did not bring any medication, not even a single tablet for a headache… or at least we didn’t see any. There were babysitters on offer for free, but they were dismissed that evening, for whatever reason. Among the group of friends, there are checks to suit every taste, according to their statements: every 15 minutes, every half hour, etc. Some only check on their own, others check on all the children, others only listen at the door… In the case of the twins, they didn’t even need to bother, they simply could not wake up, even in the midst of the turmoil that was generated that night. The caring mother told the neighbour upstairs that the police had been called when the alarm was raised, but she was lying. The first people that called the GNR were the employees of the Ocean Club. The same neighbour said she never saw the mother in a panic, which would be normal for a mother under the circumstances… As far as I know, nobody ever said that the lady was lying! The father, who was a lot more worried about gathering support in England, made one phone call after another, which were more political than anything else. And why was the child’s father wandering around, in the early hours of the morning, asking for the way to the church, when he had passed it so many times, on the way to the beach? And why did the English friends immediately send out the marketing and public relations heavyweight experts? Hum? And… if there were that many checks, when was the break that allowed the abductor to enter the apartment? And then there is the mother, saying that someone entered through the children’s bedroom windows, but the GNR people said that the shutters had never been forced… And then there are the doggies, that never missed a case over 200 times, and now supposedly have got it all wrong?

……….

You know, Madeleine, many of those people who work as policemen, did everything they could to solve the mystery of your disappearance, and to bring you back to the coziness of your bed. Then they continued, never stopping, to do everything they could to clarify what had happened to you. Hundreds of men and women dedicated themselves to trying to understand what had been your destiny. They never looked at their meager salaries or at their non-existent overtime payments. They gave up time with their families and with their “Madeleines” to search for you, to try to understand what might have happened to you.

If you’d ask them today if they would do it all over again, whether there was a microscopic chance of returning you into your bed or not, I assure you that all of them would respond to the calling again, and get back to work. Come rain or sunshine, against whomever they might have to go, they would do it all over again.

Just for the fact that you are a child, innocent, small and helpless, they would go into all the deserts of Morocco to search for you. They would lift the world’s carpet to see if you where underneath it.

These people are not always perfect in everything they do, but I can guarantee you one thing: they are committed, they are stubborn, and they also don’t like losing one bit, especially when children like you are at stake. That is when they dedicate themselves even more to the services that other men assign them to. Not only because of the justice of men, but essentially because of the justice that your name deserves. They did everything they could so you could laugh at the end. So you were not gone in vain. You certainly aren’t.

quote:

Finally, João Tavares leaves his young colleague – and the reader – with a challenge. He mentions a key, a sequence of four numbers that would enable him to win the ‘game’ of Praia da Luz. If you can make anything of the numbers 5, 2, 3 and 1, then you, too, might crack the case of a lifetime.

quote:

Miliband brings McCann to the European Parliament
Kate and Gerry McCann, arguidos in the investigation with the disappearance of their Madeleine daughter, will be next Thursday in the European Parliament in Brussels, or they will take part in a meeting in connection with the creation of a European alarm system to announce the disappearance of children.

According to a source within the permanent representation of the United Kingdom at the European Parliament, it is the cabinet of David Miliband, Foreign Minister, whom the participation of McCann would have intervened in order to allow

In spite of the importance of the subject, several members of Parliament already expressed their surprise with the participation of the couple, considering their statute of suspects in an investigation which is always in hand vis-a-vis the justice of one of the Member States.

The meeting coincides with the adjournment of a declaration written in connection with the European co-operation in the searchs for missing children. At the origin of the meeting have finds the British Glenys Kinnock, Edouard McMillan-Scott, Struan Stevenson and Diana Wallis. After the meeting, Gerry and Kate McCann, give a press conference with several British members of Parliament.

quote:

Op zaterdag 5 april 2008 11:36 schreef kahaarin het volgende:
>knip<

Dit kan imho 2 kanten op gaan, of ze hebben zich zo ingegraven dat de zaak openblijft en ze arguido af zijn binnenkort of ze hebben juist door al dat gespin in het nieuws er voor gezorgd dat ze dat nooit kunnen maken en ze zijn inderdaad de komende 20 jaar arguido.

Hoe dan ook, er is blijkbaar geen sluitend bewijs voor de schuld/onschuld van de ouders, de bewijzen in dat app zijn grondig om zeep geholpen door die kudde 'helpers' die door de kamer is gebanjerd, de pers is monddood gemaakt, de PJ zo tegengewerkt dat het me verbaasd dat er nog actie ondernomen wordt, volgens mij is de enige oplossing het vinden van, waarschijnlijk, het lijkje van Maddy. Dan weten ze iig wat haar is overkomen en kunnen ze vandaaruit verder rechercheren.

quote:

McCanns and their attendance
I’ve taken a backseat lately with regard the McCann case because it has been purely spin with no real news. I have a feeling that repeating words on a daily basis is only helping to perpetuate the thorny bush of ‘they say I say.’

However – the news with regard the McCanns being present at the Europe-wide alert system for cases of child abduction has really flummoxed me to the point that I feel something should be said.

Putting things into perspective: The McCanns are ‘parents’ who have (by their own admission) left their children alone while they socialised with friends, they are suspects in Madeleine’s disappearance and have nothing whatsoever to substantiate their claims that Madeleine had been abducted, yet they are attending a debate with regard child abduction? Where is the sense in that?

What can the McCanns add to this debate? Do not leave your children unattended while you socialise? Please remember to get a babysitter to watch over your children? That’s common sense with most parents and does not exactly correspond with the ‘Amber Alert’.

But perhaps rather than asking the above questions people should be questioning why the European Parliament has allowed the McCanns to be present.

Wider agenda perhaps?

To round off - According to BBC News : “The couple's spokesman Clarence Mitchell said they were happy to use Madeleine's disappearance to boost any moves which would improve the recovery rate of missing children in the 27 EU countries.”

That statement is as questionable as Gerry McCann’s reply when the risk assessment was mentioned about Madeleine’s eye defect: “We thought it was possible this could hurt her. Her abductor might do something to her eye. But in marketing terms it was a good ploy.”

Not exactly the words a person would expect from a protective parent of their apparent missing child.

quote:

Op zaterdag 5 april 2008 16:43 schreef kahaarin het volgende:
<knip>
[..]

Mrs. Jones,

Me And Mrs Jones /Billy Paul

, Me and Mrs. Jones, we've got a thing going one.....

That thing is: spin, 15 minutes of fame and a headline or 2, ik hoor het Clarrie gewoon al zingen.

quote:

"They will be interviewed as witnesses and are free to leave at any time, said a spokeswoman for Leicestershire Constabulary. No lawyers will be present. There had been speculation that diaries and Madeleine's Cuddle Cat toy could be seized by Portuguese officers, but it is understood that no property will be searched or seized. The Portuguese officers are expected to land at East Midlands Airport from Faro at 12.20pm on Monday. They will be met by British officers and are expected to avoid the public arrivals lounge by being escorted out through a private exit once they have cleared customs. The Portuguese officers are staying at a hotel in Leicester city centre.

quote:

"The process of interviewing key witnesses will last several weeks but the Portuguese detectives will return home from interviewing the Tapas Seven at the end of the week. Madeleine's parents Kate, 40, and her husband, 39-year-old Gerry, remain arguidos - formal suspects - in the case. The McCanns will not be in Leicestershire for the duration of the visit by Mr Rebelo and his team. On Wednesday, they travel to Brussels to lobby for better co-ordination between European countries when a child goes missing."

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Madeleine: in Praia da Luz, there's not even a traffic cop
The 'missing' posters are mostly torn down. The hotels are preparing for the first of the season's tourists. Police are still talking to witnesses, but there is growing acceptance that Madeleine McCann's disappearance will never be explained

The good news for the reception desk at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz is that they have every prospect of a full house for late April and early May. It is particularly welcome this year, as tourist numbers have been down because of the pound weakening against the euro and Easter falling early.

The downside is that many of their guests are likely to arrive not with bathing costumes, tennis rackets and sun cream, but with laptops, microphones and television cameras. And their focus will be on the one flat in the Mark Warner holiday complex that has lain empty for 11 months: Apartment 5-A, where Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of 3 May, 2007, a few days before her fourth birthday.

The media's first-anniversary invasion has not yet begun in earnest. Last week only a trickle of British newspaper reporters, the odd photographer and a team from al-Jazeera television were in evidence. There was no sign of the Polícia Judiciária, Portugal's equivalent of the CID, nor even an ordinary traffic cop, outside the flat where Madeleine was last seen. Only a flimsy silver chain barring entry to the back garden entrance recalls the tragedy, the agonising efforts to find Madeleine that became a worldwide campaign and the deepening mystery surrounding the case after her parents, Kate and Gerry, were interrogated and declared arguidos, or formal suspects, by the Portuguese authorities last August.

The posters of Madeleine that filled every shop window in the weeks after her disappearance are gone. Just one faded image of her is still on display - on the bulletin board outside the church, where the local Catholic and Anglican communities hold an ecumenical service every Friday to highlight the case of Madeleine and of other missing children around the world.

Poignantly, a poster recently pinned up at the entrance of the Baptista supermarket, a few dozen yards downhill from the flat where Madeleine last hugged her mother goodnight, pleads in Portuguese: 'Não te esqueças de mim.' Don't forget about me.

In recent weeks, to the alarm of Madeleine's parents back home in the Leicestershire village of Rothley, that had seemed a real possibility. In Portugal the active search for their missing daughter by the police and hundreds of local residents on the oceanfront, in gardens, olive groves and scrubland has long since ended.

The police, and the Spanish-based Metodo 3 detective agency hired by the McCanns, are still responding to 'sightings' or claims of fresh evidence of what has happened to her, but these have become less and less frequent. A recent claim by a taxi driver on the eastern end of the Algarve coast, near the Spanish border, that he had driven Madeleine and four adults to a nearby hotel on the night of her disappearance appears to have come to nothing. So, too, has a freelance search by a Madeira-based lawyer of a lake down a twisting potholed lane outside the Algarve's old Moorish capital, Silves.

The police investigation, and the often lurid local newspaper headlines accompanying it, have gone quiet. Last October a new officer was put in charge. The official spokesman for the investigation has been replaced by two Lisbon-based officials who were politely replying last week to all press inquiries by saying: 'Sorry. It is our policy that we cannot comment at all on the case.'

In fact, there are now signs of new movement in the investigation - and every prospect that, starting in the next few days and building towards the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, her case will again be front-page news in Portugal, Britain and around the world.

Early this week a team of Portuguese police is due to travel to Britain to re-interview witnesses from the so-called 'Tapas Nine' - the seven friends who, along with the McCanns, were dining at a poolside tapas restaurant 50 yards from Apartment 5-A on the night Madeleine disappeared. Particularly in the light of a comment by Portugal's Justice Minister, Alberto Costa, two months ago that the investigation was nearing its conclusion, the mission is likely to prove critical in determining in what direction, and at what pace, the next stage of the largest police probe in Portugal's history is now taken.

The only other person named as a suspect in the case would already seem to be out of the frame, to the cautious relief of his distraught family, veteran pillars of Praia da Luz's expatriate British community. Robert Murat, 33, was on a week's visit from Britain to his mother Jenny's home, yards from Apartment 5-A, when Madeleine disappeared. But he cancelled his return flight, stayed on in Praia da Luz, and was informally helping the investigators as a translator when a British Sunday newspaper journalist told the police she thought he was acting suspiciously.

They brought him in for questioning and - largely, Portuguese polices sources have said, on the strength of British crime profilers - formally made him an arguido in mid-May. They secured a routine three-month extension to his suspect status last January, but in recent weeks have returned a computer, his clothing and other property removed from the home that Murat shares with his mother.

The McCanns, too, are drawing some hope from the Portuguese police team's visit to Britain. Their spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said yesterday that while the couple had made clear their readiness to speak to the investigators, or even to return to Portugal if required, 'there has been no request to talk to them'. He also revealed that, contrary to media speculation in recent months, the visiting investigators have conveyed no plans to conduct any searches in Britain, to take possession of Kate's personal diary, or of Cuddle Cat - Madeleine's favourite toy - which Kate constantly clasped by her side during the weeks after her disappearance.

But an unprecedentedly detailed account of the days and weeks after Madeleine's disappearance from a well-placed Portuguese police source suggests that - after numerous fruitless twists and turns in the investigation, and in the absence of either a 'body or a confession' - the police focus is on the accounts of the McCanns and their friends of precisely what happened to Madeleine on the night she vanished.

The source has not suggested there is evidence that Madeleine's parents were involved in the disappearance, or the possible death, of their child - a suggestion that Kate and Gerry have passionately denied, pressing home the point last month in securing a half-million-pound settlement from the Express newspaper group over stories suggesting they were implicated. Indeed, amid the rash of reports last September suggesting there was DNA proof linking Madeleine's parents to her death, the same police source emphasised that the DNA samples had proved to be degraded, incomplete, possibly contaminated and inconclusive. But the source has said that, almost from the outset, particularly amid growing Portuguese police scepticism that Murat had any connection with Madeleine's disappearance, the 'key' to the investigation had been in unravelling what the Polícia Judiciária felt were 'difficulties and contradictions' in the accounts given by the McCanns and their friends in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

Part of the police concern, he said, involved details of Kate and Gerry's initial statements - whether the back window and shutters in the flat had been open or closed, for instance, and whether Gerry had entered from the front door or the back and exactly when the parents or their friends had checked to make sure Madeleine and her then two-year-old twin siblings, Sean and Amelie, were safe and well.

Equally crucial to somehow resolving the case, he said, were the accounts of the 'Tapas Nine' - and particularly Jane Tanner, who earlier this year went public in a BBC Panorama documentary with her account of having seen a man carrying a child in pink pyjamas like Madeleine's outside the McCanns' flat at 9.15pm.

'Jane at first made no mention of the pyjamas,' the source insisted. He said that this detail and a number of others about the man apparently carrying a child emerged only later in her statements to the police. He said the initial statements by the McCanns and each of their friends had 'never fit together' and that the police were particularly sceptical when, after the group had had time to talk a few days later, an 'agreed time-line' seemed to emerge.

Mitchell said yesterday that, far from opposing the latest move by the Portuguese police to press their concerns over the 'Tapas Nine' testimony, the McCanns, Tanner and their other friends eagerly welcomed the opportunity, in the hope of finally bringing the legal process to an end and focusing 'on what really matters - Madeleine'. Some of the friends, he said, had even considered going back to Portugal to try to speed an end to the investigation.

Mitchell said he was not surprised by the inconsistencies in the initial accounts. 'You had nine people in a bar without watches on, without mobile phones, and absolute panic set in when they realised what had happened. They were running around and then several hours later they were forced to sit down and recount their movements in exact detail and they were at sixes and sevens... We would say that, if the police had a perfect time line across nine people, that would be a damn sight more suspicious than the fractured, illogical composite statements they might have got.'

And although Mitchell was not in Praia da Luz in the days after Madeleine disappeared, he said his personal contacts since then with Tanner and the other friends had convinced him there was 'nothing furtive or suspicious' about the time-line provided to the police. 'Everything I've seen and heard on a private, human level tells me that this is an innocent group of people who have got caught up in this awful situation and they're doing their best to try and help their friends on a decency level.'

Luis Maia, a leading Portuguese television journalist who co-authored the first of what are now five books on Madeleine in Portugal, said yesterday his gut feeling was that - barring an unexpected breakthrough, or a formal police request to re-interview Kate or Gerry - the investigation was finally nearing an inevitable end, with the mystery of the missing girl no closer to resolution.

For the parents, the next few days and weeks are likely to be difficult, with the approach of the anniversary of the disappearance of a daughter nearing her fifth birthday - especially in Rothley, in the home Kate had said she could not bear to live in again without having Madeleine back.

'Some days, for both Kate and Gerry, are better than others,' Mitchell said. 'But they still believe she is quite possibly alive. There has been no evidence to the contrary.

'And every day that goes by without her being found makes them think that she must be somewhere, very well hidden, and that someone must have her.'

How life changed for those caught in the public glare of a heart-rending case
The parents

As the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance draws closer, her parents are back home in the Leicestershire village of Rothley. Gerry has returned to full-time work as a cardiologist, on call, with regular NHS hours. Kate, a GP, has decided not to go back to work at a local surgery until the fate of her daughter is resolved. She takes Sean and Amelie to nursery school every day and is in frequent phone or email contact with 'Find Madeleine' campaign organisers, charities, the family's lawyers and police.

'There are good days and bad days,' says the McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell, but they take hope from the belief that, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, their daughter is still alive.

Meanwhile, they have thrown themselves into urging Britain and the rest of Europe to improve co-ordination in dealing with missing children and to adopt an American-style 'amber light' alert system to speed up attempts to find them.

That will be the core message of a British television documentary in which they plan to take part on the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance. 'They feel that if, God forbid, Madeleine is not found, that will be a fitting legacy for her,' says Mitchell.

The McCanns' first spokesman

Within hours of the news of Madeleine's disappearance, Alex Woolfall of the London-based PR agency Bell Pottinger was asked by Mark Warner to fly to Praia da Luz as part of a 'crisis' team to help her traumatised parents deal with the media.

'People forget there was quite a lot of hope at the time and we figured that if we got photos out someone would call up and say: "Yes, I've just spotted her."'

Woolfall says he feels the way the media behaved was 'unique and extraordinary - and I put that down to the fact that so many of the journalists out there were doing the story as parents first, and journalists second. It was: there, but for the grace of God, go we.'

With the approach of the anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, he says, he has inevitably found himself reflecting on her parents' agony. 'This year a very good friend of mine has had a baby, and I've watched him grow over the last 12 months. And he's become an individual rather than a baby now.

'And I just cannot imagine what it would be like to have a child and bring up a child and then to have that child taken from you. I just feel deeply, deeply sad for Kate and Gerry. I don't think anyone can really imagine what is like to go out on holiday with three children and to come back with two.'

Robert Murat

'A year in hell' is how friends of Murat describe the experience of the Briton, raised in Portugal, who had been helping the police with translations for the case and suddenly found himself declared a formal suspect barely a week after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

In the intervening months, he, his mother and other relatives in Praia da Luz and the nearby beach village of Brugão have had to come to terms with police questioning. Murat's mother Jenny, 72, says that she, her son and others in the family have tried to stay positive and have kept a daily diary of their ordeal in an effort to help them to cope.

Now, with the police having returned Robert's possessions and agreed to his going to England, she says they are holding out hope that he may soon be released from arguido status. 'When all is said and done,' she said, 'that is still what matters - the fate of this poor little girl.'

The private investigators

Metodo 3 is a Barcelona-based agency that built its reputation on corporate fraud investigations before the McCanns engaged it on a six-month contract last year to follow up reported sightings of the missing girl throughout Europe and in Morocco.

But with its managing director, Francisco Marco Fernández, making increasingly upbeat remarks about the prospects for a breakthrough on finding Madeleine - most controversially, a statement late last year that 'God willing, we hope she will be home by Christmas' - the agency has now agreed that all comments should go through the McCanns' spokesman, Clarence Mitchell.

Metodo 3 remains on a monthly retainer of £8,000, Mitchell says. 'The agency are very good on the ground. They're very passionate and committed to the search for Madeleine.' In fact, he told The Observer, the family's hope is that the Portuguese police will ultimately close their investigation and pass on all the relevant papers to Metodo 3 to reinvigorate the search.

The family friend

Jane Tanner has been haunted by the thought that she could have prevented Madeleine's disappearance. Tanner, 38, was among the seven friends with the McCann parents at the restaurant on the night in question. She had gone back to check on her own children and is certain she saw a man carrying a pyjama-clad child nearby.

Generally, Tanner has avoided making public remarks but, in a recent BBC Panorama, she said: It's important that people know what I saw, because I believe Madeleine was abducted.'

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MADDYWATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann

DAILY TELEGRAPH: “Madeleine McCann police due to arrive in UK”

The Portuguese police are coming.

Portuguese police are due to arrive in Britain today to observe as the friends of Kate and Gerry McCann are interviewed about the night Madeleine went missing.

And Kate and Gerry McCann?

The McCanns will not be in Leicestershire for the duration of the visit by Mr Rebelo and his team. On Wednesday, they travel to Brussels to lobby MEPs for better co-ordination between European countries when a child goes missing.

They will return to Leicestershire on Thursday evening before the Portuguese officers fly home.

THE SUN: “‘Tapas seven’ face police quiz”

Not the Tapas Nine.

The “Tapas Seven” – who were having dinner with Kate and Gerry McCann when Maddie four, vanished – will be interviewed as witnesses by officers from Leicestershire Constabulary.

Portuguese detectives, led by investigation chief Paulo Rebelo, arrive in Britain today and will stay a week.

A spokeswoman for Leicestershire Constabulary said: “Leicestershire Constabulary will be co-ordinating the execution of the request for mutual legal assistance made by the Portuguese authorities. The Portuguese authorities have asked that the contents of the request and the way it is being executed be kept confidential so as not to prejudice their ongoing investigation.”

DAILY MAIL: “Portuguese detectives set to quiz ‘Tapas Seven’ in London about Madeleine ’s disappearance”

Mr Mitchell said it was “pure coincidence” that the McCanns were leaving Britain during the week of the police interviews.

He said: “To say this is a smokescreen is utter rubbish. It is pure co-incidence that police interviews are being conducted at the same time the European Parliament is sitting, and Kate and Gerry are tabling a motion.”

Madeleine McCann: More questions and no answer

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06/04/08 McCanns Case: 60 witnesses will be interrogated by Police Up to 60 witnesses will be questioned by police in Britain over Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.

A series of intensive interviews will start this week after a three-man team of senior Portuguese detectives fly into Leicestershire tomorrow. The trio, led by Paulo Rebelo, the chief investigator in the case, will begin by supervising the quizzing of key witness Jane Tanner.

Ms Tanner, 36, claimed she saw a man carrying a girl from the McCanns’ holiday apartment in the Algarve at about 9.15pm. Yet another witness says he was outside the flat in Praia da Luz at the same time but did not see her or the mystery man. [Jeremy Wilkins, married with Bridget O'Donnel]

After Ms Tanner’s interview, British police, supervised by the Portuguese, will spend three days speaking to remaining members of the Tapas Seven who were dining with Madeleine’s parents when she vanished.

No lawyers will be present and friends of the group stressed they are meeting the police voluntarily. They have been warned to expect lengthy bouts of questioning. The group were all dining with Kate and Gerry McCann on the night their daughter vanished on May 3 last year in Praia da Luz.

Ms Tanner’s partner Dr Russell O’Brien, 36, from Exeter, was away from the group tending to his sick daughter in the period when Madeleine was snatched. Dr Matthew Oldfield, 37, a hospital consultant from London, and his wife Rachel, 36, a recruitment consultant, were also at the tapas restaurant. David Payne, 41, a cardiovascular researcher from Leicester, was the final person, apart from the McCann family, to see Madeleine. His wife, Fiona, 34, and her mother, Diane Webster, will also be questioned by police in Leicester.

Then officers will switch their attention to three separate bands of witnesses who have been singled out by Gerry and Kate McCann as vital.

As arguidos, or official suspects, the couple have the right to demand that certain individuals be seen by police if they are believed to hold relevant information. Despite plans for the Portuguese investigators to return home on Friday, British police will mount a full-scale operation in which more than 50 more witnesses will be interviewed. These will include other guests who were staying at the resort, Ocean Club apartments staff and holidaymakers staying nearby.

Relatives of the McCanns who visited the Algarve in the weeks after she went missing are understood to be on the list, as are their current spokesman Clarence Mitchell and his predecessor Justine McGuiness. [So, apparently Clarence is not going to Brussels after all.]

Two sisters who were puzzled by a blond pair of men in their 30s acting strangely at the resort hours before Madeleine went missing are on the interview list. Jayne Jensen, 54, and Annie Wiltshire, 58, said one of the men standing outside the patio doors started to walk down a flight of steps. [Wasn't that Murat they tried to frame?]

But when he was seen by divorced mum-of-two Annie, from Maidstone, he retraced his steps and began talking to his friend. Yesterday the McCanns made an emotional plea to Portuguese detectives to clear them in time for the one year anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance.

Madeleine’s parents, both 39, hope the unprecedented move to question their friends in Britain will mark an end to their seven-month ordeal as suspects. [40 years old not 39] The couple are desperate to return to Praia da Luz to mark the tragic date with a renewed appeal for information which could unlock the mystery surrounding what happened. [???]

Clarence Mitchell confirmed that Kate and Gerry want detectives to lift their arguido status and reveal any evidence they hold. [Excuse me, who the hell are they to demand the PJ to lift their arguido status??]

He said they will not return to the Algarve while they are still suspects. [First they wouldn't leave, they would cooperate with the PJ, then they left, didn't cooperate with the PJ, then they would come back to Portugal inspite of their lawyers advices, now they won't come back...] He said: “Kate and Gerry want to return to Praia da Luz to reinvigorate our campaign to find Madeleine.” [...reinvigorate our campaign for the fund, Mr. Mitchell...??]

Source: Express (The article you are looking for does not exist. It may have been deleted.)

quote:

"Gerry and Kate McCann have been asked to return to Portugal to take part in a large-scale re-enactment of the hours surrounding Madeleine's disappearance.

The McCanns' lawyers have met the Portuguese police authorities who requested that they return to the resort of Praia da Luz where their daughter disappeared almost a year ago. Today they were locked in negotiations about what the re-enactment should contain and what purpose it would serve.

While the couple are willing to help keep the case in the public eye, they are concerned about going back to Praia da Luz while their status as official suspects remains, and are seeking assurances that any re-construction is used to generate new leads in the hunt for their missing daughter.

Friends of the couple said that Mrs McCann may be too traumatised to take part. One said: "There has been no apparent thought given to her emotional position in taking part in such a re-enactment."

A family source said the McCanns had not ruled out taking part and the issue was under discussion. He said: "There are loads of questions still to be addressed such as whether the twins, Sean and Amelie, will be required and what the actual re-enactment will be used for.

"No-one knows whether it will be done behind closed doors or whether it will be a Crimewatch-style reconstruction used to try and generate new leads. All these types of things need to be ironed out before a decision is made." Any reconstruction would be an unusual move for the Portuguese police as it is not a tactic normally used in investigations.

The BBC show Crimewatch approached the Portuguese authorities shortly after Madeleine, 4, disappeared last May, but were turned down and told it was not normal practise. A couple of possible dates have been discussed, the earliest so far being in mid-May. It won't take place in or around the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance on May 3.

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Jane and Russell "grilled" by the PJ: Witnesses with bad memory 24horas

Jane Tanner did not even manage to repeat the description of the man she claimed to have seen with a child in the arms in that fateful night

Text by Carlos Tomas, in Leicester
(Thanks to Joana Morais for translation)

Jane Tanner, one of the main witnesses in the process of Maddie's disappearance, yesterday again, gave a different account from the previous ones. Questioned by the PJ team that was sent to England, Jane did not manage to explain how, when and where she saw the supposed kidnapper - the same that, in November, she described in a very detailed way for the making of a sketched portrait of the suspect. Yesterday, Tanner could not even tell if she went to check on her own children in the bedroom at the Ocean Club. The sentence "I do not remember", ended up being her most frequent answer. "She entered very calm and even smiled. When she went out she was trembling and her face was very red. She did not speak with anyone", described to 24horas a source at the headquarters from the Leicester police.

We were able to establish that Tanner was confronted with the fact that, in her first statement, back in May, she said nothing relevant, later said that she saw a man carrying, which seemed to her, a child in his arms and, in November, she described the alleged kidnapper. The answer was: “I do not remember it well anymore” .The investigators even asked Jane to give again the description of the person, but the witness gave different indications from those that were used to make the drawing that ran throughout the world.

Also heard yesterday was Russell O'Brien, Jane's husband, who says he had gone to see the children at the same time that Maddie disappeared. He said, back in May, that the children had vomited, but the management of the resort Ocean Club assured that, on that night, nobody asked for any change of bed sheets. Questioned, Russell could not explain the discrepancy.

Today there will be cross-examinations to David and Fiona Payne, who organized the holidays of the group in the Praia da Luz.

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09/04/08
116000, the single EU hotline number for missing children is NOT a McCann Idea

The TRUTH

116000, the single EU hotline number for missing children

IP/07/188
Brussels, 15 February 2007

The Commission has adopted today the Decision reserving the 116000 telephone number in all Member States as a hotline for reporting missing children. Other common Europe-wide telephone services of social value starting with 116 may soon be reserved following this Decision.
"I am delighted that today the first major step towards a single EU hotline number for missing children has been taken," said EU Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding. "I urge Member States to act now to make this a reality, so that Europe's parents will soon know that they are able to call this number and get immediate help."

The first number to be reserved Europe-wide is 116000. All other numbers beginning with 116 are also reserved for social services in Europe and this Decision is binding on Member States. These freephone numbers and the services they provide will benefit citizens by helping those in difficulty, or by contributing to their well-being or safety. Meer, zie de gegeven links.

quote:

The Judiciary Police wants to have in Portugal, in the next month, Kate and Gerry McCann, the British couple whose three-year-old daughter disappeared from Praia da Luz, Algarve. The objective of the Portuguese investigators is to try, with a re-enactment of the night on the 3rd of May in the location of the crime, to understand the various contradictions of the statements given by the last persons who saw Maddie alive. In this group, there are seven friends who were accompanying the McCanns in the dinner of the Tapas Bar, when the alarm of the disappearance of the girl was given.

Clarence Mitchell, the press adviser of the family, confirmed yesterday the PJ’s request, but did not reveal dates, or details of the re-enactment. He was not clear on the possibility of the McCanns returning, leaving in the 'air the hypothesis' that the couple would accept willingly the diligence if they stopped being arguidos.

Other of the wishes of the McCanns to agree to the participation in the reconstitution would be that the same is subjected to a TV broadcast. Something that is unthinkable in the light of the legal Portuguese system, where the process is kept under the secrecy of Justice. Police sources said to the CM that the shelving of the suspicions against the parents of the child are not predictable before the end of the inquiry. Gerry, Kate or other of the English friends who spent holidays in Luz are not obliged to return, unless, if there are strong signs of the practice of a crime, which would lead to international warrants to be issued.

IMPORTANT WITNESSES

The day of yesterday was important for the PJ. They cross-examined again Jane Tanner and Russell O'Brien, the couple that had the biggest contradictions in the statements given in the last months. The PJ was intending to know exactly where Jane affirmed to have seen Maddie's kidnapper and how she managed to describe him after several months, although she did not do it on the days that followed the girl’s disappearance. Another doubt was how it was possible for her to see a man carrying a child in front of the apartment exactly at the same hour while Gerry was standing just a few meters away. And why Maddie’s father and a friend that were talking in that place did not see the same stranger with the girl.

As for Russell, the objective is to explain his goings to the bedroom where his daughters were sleeping, during the dinner. The Englishman was the one who stayed away longer from the table of the restaurant. He said what one of the daughters had vomited while she was sleeping, but there was no request to change dirty bed sheets.

SPECTACLE AT THE POLICE DOOR

The police display yesterday was enormous, during the whole morning and afternoon, near the installations of the police of Leicester. Dozens of photographers concentrated near the gates and tried to register the entries of the main protagonists: three elements of the PJ (Paulo Rebelo on the right, in the photo from above, accompanied by his team of inspectors) and the couple Jane Tanner and Russell O'Brien.

HIGH SECURITY ON THE POLICE STATION

The headquarters of the Leicester Police - where the interrogations took place - is surrounded by great measures of security. Nobody goes through the gate without obtaining a prior authorization.

MADDIE'S MOTHER AT HOME

Kate McCann came yesterday at the door of house. Only to close the door, furious, while noticing the presence of Portuguese journalists. Her friend wrote down the license plate of the car of the CM and phoned to the spokesman of the couple, Clarence Mitchell.

TEAM WITH AGITATED DAY

The three elements of the Judiciary Police which will, until next Friday, accompany the interrogations to the friends of the McCanns went out early from the Ramada Hotel, where they are staying. Before 09h00 a car of the Leicester police stopped at the Hotel's main entry and took the investigators even to headquarters. They entered in the headquarters in great speed and followed up to a building which was not possible for the journalists to see. There, they accompanied the investigations, which were made by the local police. They could not ask questions directly to the witnesses, but they where allowed to make suggestions.

The rogatory letter was sufficiently to authorize new questions and even to request new diligences. What can still be done till next Friday

'UNTOUCHABLE' IMAGE OF KATE E GERRY

The neighbourhood is peaceful. Equal to others which fill the small city of Rothley, where several practically equal dwellings stand out. In the street that gives access to the house - the McCanns House is the last one of the village and can be distinguished by the toys that are kept near one of the windows – there are almost no signs of life.

Two cars are at the door and Kate and Gerry prepared their trip to Brussels, set for tomorrow, with the couple travelling in a flight expected to be in the end of the afternoon and with a departure of an airport of London.

A little time has passed since the lunch hour when, the door opens and Kate comes to the entry. She says goodbye to a friend but the presence of the journalists of the CM hastens the farewell. Kate closes the door, remains hidden and Englishman that had gone out from the house stops in front of the car rented by the CM. Ostensibly, taking the number of the license plate and, by phone, he informs Clarence Mitchell, the adviser of the McCanns, that there are journalists at the door of the couple - a break of the compromise taken by the generality of the journalists, who accepted rules imposed by the McCanns and guided visits of the couple for photographic sessions. The CM does not accept compromises of this type.

When the incident ended - with the exit of the journalists of the CM-, the city seems to have forgotten Maddie.

DETAILS

HOTEL CHANGES RULES
The stay of the team of the Judiciary Police of Portimão in the Ramada Hotel, in Leicester, altered the internal rules of that unity. The bar, which was usually open not for guests until 01h00, now closes at 23h00.

PACIFIC FAMILIARITY
Portuguese journalists and police are put up in the same hotel, in the centre of the city of Leicester. The familiarity between all is appeasing, but the silence is maintained. Paulo Rebelo the PJ‘s coordinator and responsible for the department of Portimão, goes on repeating to the journalists that he does not give any statements.

CHANGE OF COURSE
At the same hour in that several of journalists were concentrated at the door of the police of Leicester to register the arrival of Jane Tanner and Russell O’Brien, to be questioned, Clarence Mitchell, the spokesman of the McCann, was calling the reporters for a press conference at 20 kilometres of distance. The dash was general.

50 WITNESSES
The lawyers of the couple McCann presented a list to the police of more than 50 persons, besides the group of friends that spent holidays with them in Praia da Luz, to be heard in England. They are close persons of the couple, defence witnesses.

FRIENDS WITHOUT LAWYERS
As they are cross-examined in the capacity of witnesses, all the friends of the McCanns have no use for the lawyers' presence.

CRUCIAL WITNESSES
The most important evidences are those of Jane and Russell, the first ones being heard because they assume total priority for the Judiciary Police.

EMPTY MEMORIAL
In Rothley, the memorial to the dead in the world wars, where were the most varied objects put in memory of the child, has nothing now.

SILENCE RULES
In the commercial establishments nobody wants to talk about the child, keeping some distance of the motives of a disappearance that ran throughout the World. Source: Correio da Manhã