Li

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/2007/12/30/t.....feito.html