polandguy I have just returned to my hotel from the European Parliament where I was able to both witness the McCann event and strike a blow for Madeleine by distributing leaflets about the case.
When I discovered the McCanns were to take their circus to Brussels I checked my diary and saw that I was going to be there the same day anyway on business! This being too good an opportunity to pass up, I drafted a 3-page flyer “Truth and Justice for Madeleine�?(see below), had my secretary print it up and I flew over with 100 copies in my briefcase. I managed to get a pass to the EP (not difficult) and headed for the press conference. I missed the presentation part of Amber Alert held in a different room of the EP, seeing only that it was packed to the rafters. But I was in good time for the press conference. I spent about half an hour standing outside the press conference room handing out the leaflets to journalists all of whom expressed great interest. No non-journalists allowed in but there was a video feed in another room.
Other points:
Had an opportunity to chat to one or two Euro MEPs. One of whom I expected better was toeing the party line on “Portuguese police inefficient, McCanns doing what anyone else would do, what’s the evidence?�? Disappointing. One MEP supportive.
Journalists reacted very positively to the leaflets. Several wanted to talk to me on the record but for obvious reasons I had to turn them down. One or two wanted to talk further privately and I have their contacts.
Below is what I distributed. I got rid of about 80 copies and left some lying around outside the press conference room (only journalists were permitted inside).
Page One was 24-point bold title “Truth and Justice for Madeleine�? then picture of Maddie, then website addresses of http://www.mccannfiles.com and http://www.the3arguidos.net.
Then two pages of A4 as follows, bold type:
On 3rd May 2007, Madeleine McCann disappeared from her parents�?holiday apartment at Praia da Luz in Portugal.
Her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, had left her and her two younger siblings in an unlocked apartment that evening, as they had done every evening of their holiday, in order to enjoy an alcohol-fuelled dinner at the resort Tapas bar, well over a hundred metres away. From the bar, they were unable to have a clear line of sight to the apartment where Madeleine was. They left them unattended, despite their Mark Warner holiday resort offering babysitting services and evening supervision of children.
They claim to have checked on them every half an hour. Yet the statements of the parents and their companions to the police about their movements that night are full of contradictions and obfuscations.
The very instant that Kate McCann discovered that Madeleine was missing, she and her husband Gerry insisted that she had been abducted.
Yet there is little evidence that Madeleine was abducted from the apartment.
Since May 2007, there has been an ongoing investigation by the Policia Judiciária, the Portuguese police (PJ), into Madeleine’s disappearance. The investigation is currently headed personally by Paulo Rebelo, the respected national deputy director of the PJ.
According to information in the Portuguese press, Paulo Rebelo and his team have concluded that the evidence for an abduction is minimal, and that in all probability Madeleine died in the holiday apartment. Their conclusions are based on forensic and other evidence, including evidence collected through the use of UK police sniffer dogs trained in the discovery of cadaver odour. The dogs used by the Portuguese and British police are the same ones which discovered concealed remains in the recent Jersey children’s home case.
On the basis of police evidence and investigations, the parents of Madeleine were constituted suspects (or “arguidos�? by the Portuguese police in September 2007, and then immediately left Portugal for the UK, following police interviews in which they refused to answer key questions put to them by the Portuguese police. They have not returned to Portugal since then.
This week (April 7th-11th 2008), a top-level team of the Policia Judiciara, led by Paulo Rebelo himself, are in the United Kingdom, conducting interviews together with the police of Leicestershire. They are interviewing the companions of the McCanns on the fateful evening, the so-called Tapas 7, because of inconsistencies in their original statements to the police last spring. The Portuguese police suspect that the Tapas 7 are being untruthful in their evidence, and that they have knowledge of what happened to Madeleine that fateful night.
The McCanns personally, and through their media spokesman Clarence Mitchell, have worked hard to discredit the Portuguese police, calling into question their competencies and motives, and insisting that Madeleine remains alive and that the police should be searching for her. The Policia Judiciária are not actively searching for her because they have concluded internally that she has in all probability been dead since May 3rd 2007.
The McCanns have set up a special fund, based on the thesis that Madeleine is alive and needs to be searched for, and which to date has collected over a million pounds (1.5 mln Euro) in donations from the public and libel fees obtained from the Express Newspaper Group. Among the mission statements of the Fund is the aim “to provide support, including financial assistance, to Madeleine’s family.�?BR>
Over the last year, the McCann parents have increasingly aligned themselves with lobbying for the Amber Alert system, in place in the US, to be introduced on a Europe-wide basis. They are positioning themselves as global ambassadors for missing children.
As they continue their campaign, many questions need to be asked. They include:
�?Why have the McCanns not taken full responsibility for the disappearance of their daughter? Surely what they should be doing is campaigning on the theme of “Do not leave your children unattended in unlocked apartments, whilst you enjoy alcohol-fuelled dinners at a distance where you cannot observe them, as we did�?
�?Why have they undertaken a campaign to discredit the Portuguese police, and invested hundreds of thousands of pounds into funding private investigators of dubious reputation (Metodo 3), to maintain the public belief that their daughter is alive? Should they not instead be co-operating in answering the questions of the PJ?
�?Why have the McCanns hired, at great expense, top lawyers in the UK and US on matters of extradition, libel and criminal evidence? These include Kingsley Napley, whose Michael Caplan QC fought efforts to extradite General Pinochet from the UK; Carter-Ruck, the UK's most expensive libel lawyers; and Hurley, Burish & Stanton in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, specialising in debunking sniffer dog evidence in criminal trials. Are these the typical actions of parents of missing children?
�?Why are the supporters of the Amber Alert system aligning themselves with Kate and Gerry McCann, who remain official suspects (“arguidos�? in an ongoing police investigation, jointly conducted by Portuguese and British police forces? Are these the right role models for ambassadors in the cause of missing children?
There are many more unanswered questions about the disappearance of Madeleine and the activities of her parents since May 2007. The McCanns and their spokesman Clarence Mitchell are working hard to suppress these questions and the debate around them, including having successfully closed down the The Mirror Group internet discussion forum, and forced (via libel proceedings) the Express Group to remove from its internet sites every article that they had published about the McCanns and the Madeleine case since May 2007. The only crime of the internet fora and the Express Group was to republish and comment on stories appearing in the Portuguese media.
Thankfully, it is still possible to debate the McCann case freely and ask the questions that the McCanns, their spokesman, and their expensive lawyers have sought to suppress. This information and debate can be found at two websites:
http://www.mccannfiles.com
http://www.the3arguidos.net
TRUTH AND JUSTICE FOR MADELEINE
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