Rogatory letters: PJ delivers requests
The PJ wants to attack friend's silence pact

The Judiciary Police is going to England to question the McCanns friends.These interrogations are considered crucial, the researchers believe that they could break the silence pact of the English group who accompanied the couple on holidays in the Algarve, in the first days of May last year.

The questions that will be made to the nine people were already written by the Portuguese researchers that will accompany the British police. They can not themselves ask questions, but they may give indications to their congeners.

This diligence is thus considered essential for the research. The PJ believes that there is a pact of silence due to the practices of the group - all of them had small children who slept imperatively at 20:00hrs and stayed in the rooms alone while the parents dinned - which might have created a 'strange' unity , which dictated silences, omissions and even complicity in some facts when it became public the disappearance of Madeleine.

It is in the context of these interrogations that the Judiciary Police believes they may have a coup of luck. One detail, a loose edge,can lead the researchers to trace the child - that the police believes is dead and whose body might have been hidden still on the night of May 3 in the vicinity of the village of Praia da Luz.

When this interrogation takes place and the results are sent to Portugal the PJ will study the possibility to re-examine the child's parents - situation that would force a new rogatory letter and the same bureaucracies of the ones that will follow to England, which took nearly three months to be prepared.

It should be noted that, as the CM reported yesterday, the diligence now released - will be fulfilled still this month - the authorities will also seize the journal of Kate McCann. The document was written after the disappearance of the child and the authorities believe is indicative of the personality of the mother. Copies of it are attached in the process, but the authorities want to obtain the original. In this diary Kate complained that the children were hysterical and lamented the lack of support from Gerry monitoring the twins Sean and Amelie, which are less than two years.

The Judiciary Police meanwhile asked the criminal judge the seizure of the diary, since is considered an element that reveals private life. The Portuguese law considers that its seizure obeys to specific rules and can only be seized in special circumstances.

There are those who argue that such a document can not be validated because it is a free text, where people reflect feelings that may not even be real and facts that may not have occurred.

THE SECRECY OF JUSTICE WILL BE MAINTAINED

The secret of the process will remain for at least for more three months. The public prosecutor will ask for it and everything indicates that the judge will accept. The argument should not differ a lot from the one that has already been raised at the first refusal to allow the lawyers to consult the process - this is a particularly sensitive case due to media importance that assumes, with risk of disruption of the investigation if many of the facts should be made public. As to the deadlines for the process to remain secret, they are uncertain. The judge should extend the secret for further three months, but there is nothing that prevents a new extension. The understandings on this issue are not unanimous.

MURAT AWAITS NOTIFICATION

Francisco Pagarete,Robert Murat's lawyer, the British who resides in Praia da Luz,is awaiting to be notified by the prosecutor. "I know that the deadline of the investigation is suspended during the judicial holidays. Therefore, I will wait a few more weeks for the prosecutor to finish the investigation and notify my client, "the lawyer told the CM, ensuring that he will not try, now, to access the contents of the research. "Let's wait with serenity. I am convinced that the documents will be filed with regard to Robert Murat and hope that everything is resolved quickly, " he said. The CM knows that the public prosecutor does not intend to make an interim order to file the facts against the British, due to the fact that the rogatory letters should also include questions about the accused in the resort on May 3.

DETAILS

VESTIGES

In August the Portuguese authorities, with the assistance of the English dogs, collected biological traces. In the house where Maddie spent holidays and in the car rented by the parents there were traces of the child disappeared in May 3. The most strange is that at that time the girl was already missing, and the car was rented at the end of the month.

LIKELY DEAD

The Judiciary Police insists on the hypothesis that Maddie McCann is dead.The parents are suspects of negligent homicide, concealment of corpse and simulation of a crime, but none of the crimes in question involves preventive arrest. The extradition to Portugal, in the case of public prosecution, is not possible in the light of the English law.
Eduardo Dâmaso / Tânia Laranjo