Can the Yard find Maddie? After four years of Portuguese blunders and cruel accusations, British detectives launch bid to end McCanns' torment

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386509/Madeleine-McCann-British-detectives-launch-bid-end-McCanns-torment.html

Scotland Yard joined the hunt for Madeleine McCann last night after her parents begged David Cameron for help.

Kate and Gerry McCann made an anguished personal plea to the Prime Minister to intervene, warning: 'We are at the end of our tether.'

Within hours of their desperate appeal, Home Secretary Theresa May announced that Scotland Yard would help Portuguese police review key evidence about Madeleine's disappearance, aged three, from an Algarve resort in 2007.

The McCanns believe potentially vital clues were missed in the botched Portuguese investigation, which was formally shelved in 2008. The Portuguese have been reluctant to reopen the failed inquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance but they have now agreed that the Met should lead a review of the evidence.

It is not clear whether British officers will travel to Portugal.

The McCanns have previously asked three Home Secretaries for help, including Mrs May. If new leads or missed opportunities are thrown up, the inquiry could be formally reopened, Government sources said.

Ministers hope the Met team can bring a ‘new perspective’ to the controversial case and have agreed that the Home Office will fund their work, which will be conducted in tandem with Portuguese police.

But the move has prompted questions about why the review could not have been carried out earlier, when evidence was fresher.

And critics will question whether there is any realistic prospect of a breakthrough in the case, which has seen no major developments since Madeleine’s disappearance on May 3, 2007.

Mrs May said: ‘The Government’s primary concern has always been and remains the safe return of Madeleine. Although she disappeared in Portugal, and the Portuguese retain the lead responsibility in the case, law enforcement agencies here have continued to follow up leads and pass information to the Portuguese authorities as appropriate.

‘The Prime Minister and I have today agreed with [Met boss] Sir Paul Stephenson that the Metropolitan Police will bring its particular expertise to this case. Clearly, the detail of what that will entail will be a matter of operational judgment.’

Missing: Madeline disappeared in May 2007 from a holiday resort in the Algarve
The Home Secretary did not reveal if it would amount to little more than a cursory ‘paper review’ in which detectives only had access to documents in the case files.

Police sources stressed last night that the Yard has ‘no jurisdiction’ in Portugal and that officers would not be taking over the inquiry.One official said: ‘Any such move would cause a major diplomatic row. We will be providing expertise and assistance.’

A team of officers in the Met’s Specialist Crimes Directorate will be formed in the next few days. It is expected they will report to Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick.

The shambolic handling of the Portuguese police investigation, in which the McCanns were named as suspects only to be cleared months later, has proved a major embarrassment to Portugal, which has been reluctant to accept international offers of help.

Shambolic: British detectives have expressed dismay over flaws in the Portuguese investigation into Madeleine's disappearance
British detectives have expressed dismay over flaws in the investigation, in which dozens of people were allowed to trample over the crime scene and evidence was found to be contaminated with cigarette ash.

At a press conference yesterday, on Madeleine’s eighth birthday, Mr McCann said: ‘We really have come to the end of our tether, we want to see action from the Government, not rhetoric.’

The heart consultant, 42, had made a personal appeal to Mr Cameron, and recalled Mr Cameron’s own suffering over the death of his six-year-old son Ivan in 2009, saying: ‘He will understand what we’ve gone through.’
More...Kate McCann: I believe kidnapper drugged my twins on the night Madeleine was taken
SANDRA PARSONS: I'm in awe of the McCanns' enduring marriage

Mr and Mrs McCann, of Rothley, Leicestershire, have used public donations to their Find Madeleine fund to pay for their four-year hunt for their daughter. They have spent more than £1million on their search, including hiring private detectives.

Leicestershire Police – the McCanns’ home force – sent three family liaison officers to Portugal in May 2007 to support the couple.

The force also carried out investigations on behalf of Portugal’s Policia Judiciaria, including gathering DNA evidence and interviewing the McCanns’ holiday friends after they had returned to Britain.

■ For details of ways to donate to the Find Madeleine fund, visit www.findmadeleine.com


I truly believe Madeleine is out there and one day we will find her and bring her home
By PAUL HARRIS

Movingly familiar: Kate McCann clings to husband Gerry during an interview yesterday

Some time in the future, if all their prayers are answered, Kate and Gerry McCann will walk hand in hand into a press conference without those haunted looks on their faces, without all the uncertainty.

There will be no more appeals, no pleas for public or government help, no need to defend themselves against criticism and accusations.

They will face the cameras with beaming smiles and announce the good news they always believed they would one day be able to share.

Yesterday wasn’t that day.
Four years after she vanished, as a mother and father should have been celebrating their beloved daughter’s eighth birthday, Madeleine McCann was still missing. All the money, hope, effort and determination they had poured into finding her these last 1,471 days had come to nothing. They still couldn’t declare she had been found safe and well.

And so, in a movingly familiar re-run of their anguished appearances during those weeks in the spring and summer of 2007, Kate and Gerry McCann entered another phase of the struggle.

With remarkable fortitude, they laid themselves bare before worldwide audiences in the hope it might lead them to their little girl. They wouldn’t give up, they told us. They still harboured the image of her running back into their arms.

How could anyone abandon hope when there was ‘absolutely no evidence’ to suggest Madeleine had come to harm? Remember the other missing children who had turned up after months and years away. ‘I feel that she’s out there,’ Kate said in one of the marathon round of interviews marking publication of her book yesterday.
‘I don’t know if all mums would feel like that but what I do know is that there’s nothing telling me to stop or slow down. I truly believe that she’s out there and if we can get the help we need then one day we might find her and get her home.’

Seeing the couple like this turned the clock back four years to the Algarve, where Madeleine disappeared, and to the travelling appeal that took them through Europe, Morocco, America and the Vatican.

The Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal, from where Madeleine McCann went missing in May 2007
Yesterday the revitalised tour took them to a succession of TV and radio studios.

In the space of a few hours we learned that the couple believe authorities have given up any possibility of finding her; that reported sightings and bits of information being given to Portuguese police are simply put in a stagnant file; and that not a single law enforcement agency anywhere in the world has been looking for Madeleine for the past three years.

That was why they had called on David Cameron to launch an independent review of all the information relating to the case – in the belief, as Gerry put it, that there ‘must be’ some detail somewhere which is worthy of investigation, and could provide a lead on Madeleine’s abductor.

Holding it back, he said, was ‘not acceptable’.

Yet it was the depth of personal and incidental information they were prepared to make public which underlined how desperate they are to rekindle the astonishing wave of public help and support that hallmarked those first few weeks of the search.

Kate – who held her husband’s hand discreetly throughout the 45-minute QEII press conference – admitted she did not want any more children. Sean and Amelie, the couple’s six-year-old twins, now knew what happened to their big sister and say she was taken ‘by the naughty man’.
The 43-year-old GP still wakes up every morning, she told us, ‘thinking this could be the day we find her’. Most of Madeleine’s toys were still in her room back home in Rothley, Leicestershire, minus a couple that the twins had quietly liberated.

But one question seemed genuinely to puzzle her. Would they ever reach a point where she felt she could do no more?

‘I don’t feel we’ll ever reach a point where we feel we’ve done everything we can,’ she said. ‘If Madeleine’s still missing then we haven’t done enough.’

Home News U.S. Sport TV&Showbiz Femail Health Science&Tech Money Debate Coffee Break Travel Royal Wedding News Home World news Arts Headlines Pictures Most read News Board My Profile Logout Login Find a Job Dating Wine Our Papers Feedback My Stories Thursday, May 12 2011 12AM 7°C 3AM 5°C 5-Day Forecast Can the Yard find Maddie? After four years of Portuguese blunders and cruel accusations, British detectives launch bid to end McCanns' torment
By James Chapman and Vanessa Allen

Last updated at 11:12 PM on 12th May 2011


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Can Scotland Yard find Maddie? The Met joined the hunt for Madeleine McCann last night after her parents begged David Cameron for help - Kate McCann is pictured at the launch of the book Madeleine
Scotland Yard joined the hunt for Madeleine McCann last night after her parents begged David Cameron for help.

Kate and Gerry McCann made an anguished personal plea to the Prime Minister to intervene, warning: 'We are at the end of our tether.'

Within hours of their desperate appeal, Home Secretary Theresa May announced that Scotland Yard would help Portuguese police review key evidence about Madeleine's disappearance, aged three, from an Algarve resort in 2007.

The McCanns believe potentially vital clues were missed in the botched Portuguese investigation, which was formally shelved in 2008. The Portuguese have been reluctant to reopen the failed inquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance but they have now agreed that the Met should lead a review of the evidence.

It is not clear whether British officers will travel to Portugal.

The McCanns have previously asked three Home Secretaries for help, including Mrs May. If new leads or missed opportunities are thrown up, the inquiry could be formally reopened, Government sources said.

Ministers hope the Met team can bring a ‘new perspective’ to the controversial case and have agreed that the Home Office will fund their work, which will be conducted in tandem with Portuguese police.

But the move has prompted questions about why the review could not have been carried out earlier, when evidence was fresher.

And critics will question whether there is any realistic prospect of a breakthrough in the case, which has seen no major developments since Madeleine’s disappearance on May 3, 2007.

Mrs May said: ‘The Government’s primary concern has always been and remains the safe return of Madeleine. Although she disappeared in Portugal, and the Portuguese retain the lead responsibility in the case, law enforcement agencies here have continued to follow up leads and pass information to the Portuguese authorities as appropriate.

‘The Prime Minister and I have today agreed with [Met boss] Sir Paul Stephenson that the Metropolitan Police will bring its particular expertise to this case. Clearly, the detail of what that will entail will be a matter of operational judgment.’

Missing: Madeline disappeared in May 2007 from a holiday resort in the Algarve
The Home Secretary did not reveal if it would amount to little more than a cursory ‘paper review’ in which detectives only had access to documents in the case files.

Police sources stressed last night that the Yard has ‘no jurisdiction’ in Portugal and that officers would not be taking over the inquiry.One official said: ‘Any such move would cause a major diplomatic row. We will be providing expertise and assistance.’

A team of officers in the Met’s Specialist Crimes Directorate will be formed in the next few days. It is expected they will report to Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick.

The shambolic handling of the Portuguese police investigation, in which the McCanns were named as suspects only to be cleared months later, has proved a major embarrassment to Portugal, which has been reluctant to accept international offers of help.

Shambolic: British detectives have expressed dismay over flaws in the Portuguese investigation into Madeleine's disappearance
British detectives have expressed dismay over flaws in the investigation, in which dozens of people were allowed to trample over the crime scene and evidence was found to be contaminated with cigarette ash.

At a press conference yesterday, on Madeleine’s eighth birthday, Mr McCann said: ‘We really have come to the end of our tether, we want to see action from the Government, not rhetoric.’

The heart consultant, 42, had made a personal appeal to Mr Cameron, and recalled Mr Cameron’s own suffering over the death of his six-year-old son Ivan in 2009, saying: ‘He will understand what we’ve gone through.’
More...Kate McCann: I believe kidnapper drugged my twins on the night Madeleine was taken
SANDRA PARSONS: I'm in awe of the McCanns' enduring marriage

Mr and Mrs McCann, of Rothley, Leicestershire, have used public donations to their Find Madeleine fund to pay for their four-year hunt for their daughter. They have spent more than £1million on their search, including hiring private detectives.

Leicestershire Police – the McCanns’ home force – sent three family liaison officers to Portugal in May 2007 to support the couple.

The force also carried out investigations on behalf of Portugal’s Policia Judiciaria, including gathering DNA evidence and interviewing the McCanns’ holiday friends after they had returned to Britain.

■ For details of ways to donate to the Find Madeleine fund, visit www.findmadeleine.com


I truly believe Madeleine is out there and one day we will find her and bring her home
By PAUL HARRIS

Movingly familiar: Kate McCann clings to husband Gerry during an interview yesterday

Some time in the future, if all their prayers are answered, Kate and Gerry McCann will walk hand in hand into a press conference without those haunted looks on their faces, without all the uncertainty.

There will be no more appeals, no pleas for public or government help, no need to defend themselves against criticism and accusations.

They will face the cameras with beaming smiles and announce the good news they always believed they would one day be able to share.

Yesterday wasn’t that day.
Four years after she vanished, as a mother and father should have been celebrating their beloved daughter’s eighth birthday, Madeleine McCann was still missing. All the money, hope, effort and determination they had poured into finding her these last 1,471 days had come to nothing. They still couldn’t declare she had been found safe and well.

And so, in a movingly familiar re-run of their anguished appearances during those weeks in the spring and summer of 2007, Kate and Gerry McCann entered another phase of the struggle.

With remarkable fortitude, they laid themselves bare before worldwide audiences in the hope it might lead them to their little girl. They wouldn’t give up, they told us. They still harboured the image of her running back into their arms.

How could anyone abandon hope when there was ‘absolutely no evidence’ to suggest Madeleine had come to harm? Remember the other missing children who had turned up after months and years away. ‘I feel that she’s out there,’ Kate said in one of the marathon round of interviews marking publication of her book yesterday.
‘I don’t know if all mums would feel like that but what I do know is that there’s nothing telling me to stop or slow down. I truly believe that she’s out there and if we can get the help we need then one day we might find her and get her home.’

Seeing the couple like this turned the clock back four years to the Algarve, where Madeleine disappeared, and to the travelling appeal that took them through Europe, Morocco, America and the Vatican.

The Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal, from where Madeleine McCann went missing in May 2007
Yesterday the revitalised tour took them to a succession of TV and radio studios.

In the space of a few hours we learned that the couple believe authorities have given up any possibility of finding her; that reported sightings and bits of information being given to Portuguese police are simply put in a stagnant file; and that not a single law enforcement agency anywhere in the world has been looking for Madeleine for the past three years.

That was why they had called on David Cameron to launch an independent review of all the information relating to the case – in the belief, as Gerry put it, that there ‘must be’ some detail somewhere which is worthy of investigation, and could provide a lead on Madeleine’s abductor.

Holding it back, he said, was ‘not acceptable’.

Yet it was the depth of personal and incidental information they were prepared to make public which underlined how desperate they are to rekindle the astonishing wave of public help and support that hallmarked those first few weeks of the search.

Kate – who held her husband’s hand discreetly throughout the 45-minute QEII press conference – admitted she did not want any more children. Sean and Amelie, the couple’s six-year-old twins, now knew what happened to their big sister and say she was taken ‘by the naughty man’.
The 43-year-old GP still wakes up every morning, she told us, ‘thinking this could be the day we find her’. Most of Madeleine’s toys were still in her room back home in Rothley, Leicestershire, minus a couple that the twins had quietly liberated.

But one question seemed genuinely to puzzle her. Would they ever reach a point where she felt she could do no more?

‘I don’t feel we’ll ever reach a point where we feel we’ve done everything we can,’ she said. ‘If Madeleine’s still missing then we haven’t done enough.’



She bowed her head slightly and looked momentarily upset. Even when she found a few seconds to laugh yesterday, she quickly brought herself in check. She admitted that she struggles to overcome a sense of ‘shame’ at the times when she is able to enjoy life.

But she has worn the same pained expression for so long now it has changed her face for ever, and little wonder. You had only to look at photographs in her book to realise how much she has lost – not just a daughter, but so many happy moments together as a family of five, and the irretrievable joy of seeing Madeleine grow up.
In the book, the smiling child is frozen in time less than two weeks short of her fourth birthday.

Copies of it were everywhere the couple went yesterday as figures showed it was already topping sales charts, an indication that it might be on the way to raising the £1million the McCanns need to fund their continuing campaign.

They also hope it could jog memories of potential witnesses, and rebuild the kind of political support they critically need.

There are clearly still a lot of questions to ask, and still no answers. And still no sign of Madeleine

quickfingers

Thank you for this article.

But why do they keep saying this:

"The shambolic handling of the Portuguese police investigation, in which the McCanns were named as suspects only to be cleared months later, has proved a major embarrassment to Portugal, which has been reluctant to accept international offers of help."

I think this is entirely and utterly wrong - its an insult.

Well, last night I saw on the news that a young pre-teen British girl's fate, that had disappeared in 2002, was finally known. As she disappeared close to her home, and with the police having the possibility (and difficulty to the contrary) of being helped by everyone that knew her, maybe the Portuguese police didn't do so bad with the missing children and adolescents, that disappeared in Portugal also.

With Madeleine there's only five cases not solved - four pre or adolescents that are missing since the nineties, and Madeleine - I know, one missing child is one too many.

I don't know how many children are missing in Britain or how many are recovered...But last year, the 193 cases reported to the PJ in 2009, were all recovered until May 2010, except for two cases of parental abduction. Maybe there is more recent data, but this shows the usual percentage that is recovered every year.RTP

So maybe there's hope for Madeleine if British authorities agree to cooperate more fully, giving the medical, social, financial and life incident reports on the McCann family and the other Tapas,..., than they did under Mr. Brown's rulling.

It is not clear whether British officers will travel to Portugal.

Oh, pretty please!

I can't believe the title of the article. It's just incredibly, incredibly offensive. Not everyone feels that way about the Portuguese or their investigation!

weary wrote:I can't believe the title of the article. It's just incredibly, incredibly offensive. Not everyone feels that way about the Portuguese or their investigation!

Edited: because my forum mates cannot in any way be aggressed by an outburst of emotion erroneously directed. Sorry girlies and guise.

«No dear Weary, [this is nothing], this is the way that one of the most respected society’s press representatives in the world express themselves, when although not doing their job, they still wish to make a point.

I'm sorry for the lack of punctuation, [I’m aware that it makes the message more difficult to digest; but that's what WE, the "blundering fool's" countrymen/women, have been forced to do for 4 years. As a very proud Algarvian that has lived a significant part of my life in touch with the British, and other foreign communities, these titles are very hard to read.

There were days when I avoided going to the places where I knew that there would be British newspapers displayed on the stands. There were times when I felt like entering one of those "english pubs" [yeah, FSoares was right, we allowed that sort of cultural colonization, so “they could feel more at home” – it’s now scientifically proved that anglo-saxons have more difficulty than other European groups to learn foreign languages and to interact with other cultures] and call everyone fools for reading those rags after having been in person, witnessing the real events.

Yes, there were days when I felt that if one of those drunk journalists that wrote those things had the guts to return to the places where I saw them working at the bar, with their tables filled with "larger glasses", with their computers instead of searching, like the normal people they now insult did, I could twist their necks, at the very least.

Sometimes [every time I read those titles, to be honest] I feel hate against them. I hate them because of the way they treated the poor people in Praia da Luz. They shoved them with disrespect, because all that mattered was to get a picture of the marvelous duo. I hate them because they were treated with respect, and they insulted the poor old ladies and men that, at the beginning, were crying and praying for Madeleine, the cries and prays that the McCann never shared with the regular people, unless it was needed for the photographs.

I hate disrespectful behaviour, I hate the lack of human decency that those disgusting human beings, valueless, emotionless display in the way they now sell their despicable “news articles”.

Well, I said it at last. From admiration for the British press [that was instilled in me by my very old grandfather that used to listen to BBC during the WWII], these last 4 years made me hateful against those beings that sign such trash on the newspapers.

They not only disrespect those that received them with kindness, they disrespect their own nation. Shame on them.

I wish I wrote or spoke Portguese as well as you write English, Luz.

I can well understand your feelings. There aren't any journalists or McCanns here, so I hope I can say that even from the vantage point of Los Angeles I've often been utterly appalled by the English coverage of this case, which I have suspected was lazy and, perhaps, contemptuous of your country and your people. It's awful to say and I apologize to the English--I don't mean all English people, I mean the McCanns, Clarence, and the journalists who slobbered all over them.

I also feel that American journalists might have done the same things, if they had covered the story. Our journalists can be spectacularly crass, too.

I think that here at missingmadeleine it is, I hope, possible to speak honestly about that coverage, and this may be a particularly good day to do so--perhaps there's a hope that the Portuguese will be able to finish up this case and put the criminals behind bars, if only for neglect. Living through the experience of having my country invaded by an utterly obnoxious, arrogant pair of people and a lazy, insulting press that wrote things about sardine-munchers--I cringed, and I'd have felt rage if I were Portuguese. I'm not sure Americans would have done any better--but the cumulative insults to Portugal and the PJ must feel intolerable.

If you try you can, Weary. After these years you all learnt "portuenglish" and "googlportish" which is even more difficult.

Weary, Wowww, you were still waiting for the sun to fall totally over the cliff and in here it is has been long gone [figuratively, of course].
I'm dwelling with my 3rd insomnia in a row....Grrrr

I understand what you say/feel, because I sometimes feel the same about USA or any other/every country that is trashed by bad journalism.

[By the way, thanks for understanding my very twisted message, and the abuse I subjected the English language to - I have the utmost respect for every language I dare try to use, and I always feel I do not do them justice because I cannot explore their potential in full..., but I try.]

I will never stop loving and feeling lucky for having the possibility to meet, and or simply communicate with British people. There are posters I remember since day one in the MirrorForum (I don't even remember how I got there on the beginning, in May/June 2007, but daren't log on until months later - it was a eye opener to see that I wasn't abnormal for feeling something was wrong), and they don’t know, because I used a different nick there [Kat], but I feel close and admire them. My feelings about the scum into the most representatives from some Media Emporiums’ [Murdoch has big legs] has no repercussion on my feelings about the “Great Britain /United Kingdom or Commonwealth”’s people.

I feel I was born in a privileged time. My grandfather would have been a Jack London or a Lawrence of Arabia (a good one, of course) had he not been held by the dictatorship that my country was subjected to during 48 years. But as an adolescent, at 15 (he, the "grandpa" lied about his age) he was sent to France during WW I. He was gazed and almost died. He was quite old when I was a child (that's the image I keep from a 50 year old *Mother called mylittleself silly that my grandfather was over 70 when I was five, that's because she never played cowboys and Indians with him, phewwww ) and I remember his stories (as well as the ones from his friend, an escapee from the Spanish Civil War that was allowed to be exiled in the mountains in the Algarve), maybe some were fantasy, about other countries and other cultures. Grandfather could speak several languages (at least he made me believe it when I was little, and I remember words that now I can link to those languages) and he taught me basic expressions to communicate with other people. I recall Russian, Flemish, German, Arabic,...equivalent to "my name is", "how are you", "thank you", etc, etc...unfortunatelly I have forgotten most of it. Anyway, what he gave me as a child was the “appetite”, the wish to be able to communicate with other people.

But maybe he didn’t have to; it seems to be a cultural trait of the Portuguese. We love to mingle; we wish/need, almost genetically, to make ourselves understood and to understand. Whenever I go to a country whose language I never learnt , after 2 or 3 days I’ll be trying to think with the sounds of that language, and I’ll find myself using one or other word/expression that subconsciously I pick from the sounds. It’s genetic, I think.

As you know we are a very small and one of the poorest countries in Europe, according to EUROSTAT, but we were the ones that instead of launching bombs started to make babies all over the planet in the fifteenth century and dared to negotiate half the Earth with Spain, to keep them away from Brazil. But unlike Spain in Latin America, and much later the British with their occupation of India and later the pink map - pink seems to pursue Brits, the Portuguese privileged the “communication” and the dissemination of the genes - it seems we were responsible for those amazingly beautiful beings called "mulatos" that result from the mixture of races. That’s why, if you go to Portuguese speaking countries (I’m joking, of course, I have no scientific data here) people prefer to dance and sing with foreigners than fight or explore them.

But as I said, to try to communicate is in fact a cultural trait, we can’t avoid it. Even when we can’t use a language, we try to use the sounds, non verbal communication, "making fools of ourselves"…
In this little corner of Europe, we are citizens of the world. We adore to receive other people.

That’s why we can’t but love everyone, except when we feel offended and mistreated. Most Portuguese feel very sad and keep inside their pain. The little old ladies and old men I talked about on the other post, still hurt for the way they feel they were used, and they still remember and pray for the little blond child, in the little church that was taken from them when the McCann were abusing it for their media parades.

I hurt but I repost. If I had some of those people in front of me like the old people did I would slap their lying faces.

Fortunately I don’t have to endure their presence, I hope. But dear Mrs McCann may have a defamation process coming soon, so she will face it or keep off Portugal forever. That disgusting book is going to get them much more than they wished for, and it’s not Pounds or Euros.

Thanks Weary for being there, a while ago. I'm going to finish this insomnia cycle - the summer is invading my bedroom - and I'm going to welcome it tomorrow, I mean in a while.

See you.


_________________

Blimeyyyyyyyyyyy, I was almost asleep, I swear...
You have one of our "productions", your President! Jeeeezzzzzzzzz
If I knew I would have smacked the bum of his greatgreatgreatgreat...father. That Mr. "Mulato" didn't deliver the hopes we, the others in the world, hoped for: honesty.

I have posted 2 comments to the sun . i don't expect to ge them published.


What will kate & gerry do if th met say ok, you need to answer those 48 questions & you and your mates need to do a police reconstruction?
Will they do as asked or more likely refuse claiming it won't help find Maddie.
What if the met call them in for interviews & asks the 48 questions kate refused to answer?
What if the Met say you have important information that will get the case reopened you need to tell the Portuguese the truth because the facts as they are as told by you & the tapas 7 do not match with what independant witness have said nor with the evidence we have.
No doubt the mccanns will claim the Met are inept, corrupt etc & threaten to sue them.
I shall be writing to the PM pointing out a few discrepancies such as them lying about sedating the kids & the kids normally slept deeply yet months down the line claiming maybe the 'abductor' did sedate them. Remember they refused to allow the twins to be tested for drugs on the night or even be checked in hospital for signs of drugs or molestation.
Maybe they would care to explain why they never searched (kate admitted not searching in an interview) but instead went jogging etc whilst locals,tourists,ex-pats & police searched.
Why Maddie asked why they didn't come when they cried & thinking was it when they were being bathed or put to bed. Where were the mccanns when they were being bathed since clearly they weren't in the same apt. as them or they would have heard the crying. That leads to the question who did bathe the kids and put them to bed? david payne perhaps since he loves bathing children?
Which apt. were they in since it wasn't 5a as the mccanns would have heard them. Why hire extradition lawyers as soon as they arrived back in the UK after promising to return if asked. Why refuse to keep the case open when they were asked if they wanted to?
Why lie to family about smashed shutters and doors hanging off.
Why did tanner lie about seeing gerry and jez when they didn't see her walk past?


Now the met are involved can we expect to see kate & gerry charged with child neglect since they have admitted leaving Maddie babysitting her 2 yr old siblings home alone in an unlocked apartment every night whilst they went out on the lash?
The police charge everyone else with neglect if they pop out to the shops for half an hour & the kids are over 10 & still there on return, the doctor whose 14 yr old home alone & took his drugs faces neglect charges & she was 10 yrs older than Maddie.
What about all those other cases where single moms from council estates get prosecuted? Maybe it is diferent because the mccanns are doctor, though i bet if kate came across a case of a child being left home alone whilst mom went to a party she would report it.
Since harm befell Maddie they could have been jailed for 10 yrs in portugal & the lot of the tapas bunch could have faced up to 5 yrs for child abandonment.
Maybe the police can charge them all over here since we know they abandoned their kids every night.
Perhaps they could also explain the sedation of the kids since this alleged abductor managed to sedate them all within a space of a couple of mins after gerry did his check & then scarper with maddie. Gerry's body language when asked if they sedated the kids indicated deception as did his words. He never said no he didn't he skipped around the answer whilst touching his ear, which is something liars do.
Remember kate everything you put in your books will be compared with the rogatory statements & all your lies will be exposed. You can expect to be called back to Portugal to explain the differences & will then be made arguida again so you can lie to your hearts content, which you can't do as a witness or you would face jail time.
By the way, Have you returned all the books confiscated from Goncalo Amaral? it is a hefty fine for each day you don't & will the fine come from the fund meant to be used to find Maddie or will it be used to pay the mortgage again?

hobnob wrote:I have posted 2 comments to the sun . i don't expect to ge them published.


What will kate & gerry do if th met say ok, you need to answer those 48 questions & you and your mates need to do a police reconstruction?
Will they do as asked or more likely refuse claiming it won't help find Maddie.
What if the met call them in for interviews & asks the 48 questions kate refused to answer?
What if the Met say you have important information that will get the case reopened you need to tell the Portuguese the truth because the facts as they are as told by you & the tapas 7 do not match with what independant witness have said nor with the evidence we have.
No doubt the mccanns will claim the Met are inept, corrupt etc & threaten to sue them.
I shall be writing to the PM pointing out a few discrepancies such as them lying about sedating the kids & the kids normally slept deeply yet months down the line claiming maybe the 'abductor' did sedate them. Remember they refused to allow the twins to be tested for drugs on the night or even be checked in hospital for signs of drugs or molestation.
Maybe they would care to explain why they never searched (kate admitted not searching in an interview) but instead went jogging etc whilst locals,tourists,ex-pats & police searched.
Why Maddie asked why they didn't come when they cried & thinking was it when they were being bathed or put to bed. Where were the mccanns when they were being bathed since clearly they weren't in the same apt. as them or they would have heard the crying. That leads to the question who did bathe the kids and put them to bed? david payne perhaps since he loves bathing children?
Which apt. were they in since it wasn't 5a as the mccanns would have heard them. Why hire extradition lawyers as soon as they arrived back in the UK after promising to return if asked. Why refuse to keep the case open when they were asked if they wanted to?
Why lie to family about smashed shutters and doors hanging off.
Why did tanner lie about seeing gerry and jez when they didn't see her walk past?


Now the met are involved can we expect to see kate & gerry charged with child neglect since they have admitted leaving Maddie babysitting her 2 yr old siblings home alone in an unlocked apartment every night whilst they went out on the lash?
The police charge everyone else with neglect if they pop out to the shops for half an hour & the kids are over 10 & still there on return, the doctor whose 14 yr old home alone & took his drugs faces neglect charges & she was 10 yrs older than Maddie.
What about all those other cases where single moms from council estates get prosecuted? Maybe it is diferent because the mccanns are doctor, though i bet if kate came across a case of a child being left home alone whilst mom went to a party she would report it.
Since harm befell Maddie they could have been jailed for 10 yrs in portugal & the lot of the tapas bunch could have faced up to 5 yrs for child abandonment.
Maybe the police can charge them all over here since we know they abandoned their kids every night.
Perhaps they could also explain the sedation of the kids since this alleged abductor managed to sedate them all within a space of a couple of mins after gerry did his check & then scarper with maddie. Gerry's body language when asked if they sedated the kids indicated deception as did his words. He never said no he didn't he skipped around the answer whilst touching his ear, which is something liars do.
Remember kate everything you put in your books will be compared with the rogatory statements & all your lies will be exposed. You can expect to be called back to Portugal to explain the differences & will then be made arguida again so you can lie to your hearts content, which you can't do as a witness or you would face jail time.
By the way, Have you returned all the books confiscated from Goncalo Amaral? it is a hefty fine for each day you don't & will the fine come from the fund meant to be used to find Maddie or will it be used to pay the mortgage again?

Don't hold your hopes high. I suspect they will not allow those comments to go through.

And if that hypothesys ever arised (which it will never) they would flee to Canada.


The last serious plea for cooperation from Portugal to Britain was over a EWA for a homicide man, of Indian origin, that had fled from Portugal after the crime.

Portuguese authorities were very swift because he had double nationality and there isn't an agreement with India. So, just like with the MCCann, the Warrant was read and sent back for rectification by Portugal for months. It was a murder case. And when the warrant was finally accepted, the Home Office informed Portugal that the citizen had travelled to India (later it was found out, with the funding of the Home Office).

So, don't ever expect to see anyone in the Tapas Team being arrested or molested because of a criminal case in another country.

I'm glad you had the opportunity to post about it, Luz. I imagine you are not the same age as my students, but I've taught students from a wide number of countries over the years in a big California university and if I had any biases towards the people of any country, as far as I know, they're gone. I hope so, anyhow. I do have a bias against British journalists, but not against my British friends. When I first lived there I was in a part of the country that Americans rarely visited (then), and when I met people I was often the first American person they'd actually spoken to. It was interesting to learn some of the presuppositions people made (but that was 35 years ago, in the Dark Ages). On the other hand, I could make up the most outrageous lies to tell them about the USA . . . no, not really. Or only to a guy who became my boyfriend.

weary wrote:I'm glad you had the opportunity to post about it, Luz. I imagine you are not the same age as my students, but I've taught students from a wide number of countries over the years in a big California university and if I had any biases towards the people of any country, as far as I know, they're gone. I hope so, anyhow. I do have a bias against British journalists, but not against my British friends. When I first lived there I was in a part of the country that Americans rarely visited (then), and when I met people I was often the first American person they'd actually spoken to. It was interesting to learn some of the presuppositions people made (but that was 35 years ago, in the Dark Ages). On the other hand, I could make up the most outrageous lies to tell them about the USA . . . no, not really. Or only to a guy who became my boyfriend.

We seem to share the same "trade values".
I also teach in an University, and I receive students from, and often go to, other countries to deliver seminars (that word deliver made me remember Socrates, somehow). And I always work with students and or colleagues in the sense that we cannot generalize. A country may have an authocratic Government, that doesn't mean that the people are bad, they cannot choose. The Portuguese have had a corrupt Government for almost 7 years that made it the last "beggars" in EU, that doesn't mean the portuguese are corrupt, etc. But to "fight stereotypes is very hard", the easy categorization that they allow is so much easier.
One of the good things that emerged from EU, even if economically it was and is a disastre, is the social and cultural understanding it allows amongst the countries. Nowadays our students can graduate by studying in different countries, and the teachers circulate in the several
countries. Investigations is much easier and the understanding and knowledge we have about each others is deeper.


__________

PS: 1/16th brain vigilant now... I'm going to see my doc. This is silly not to sleep 3 nights in a row.

I agree.I also taught abroad in international schools and it was very interesting to see how the students ( and teachers!) from different countries, coped with all the prejudices they had previously. At the end of the cursus, they were very tolerant and it was really a success.

frencheuropean wrote:I agree.I also taught abroad in international schools and it was very interesting to see how the students ( and teachers!) from different countries, coped with all the prejudices they had previously. At the end of the cursus, they were very tolerant and it was really a success.

My dear Froggie, I know you know how much we have learnt about each other.
The first time I went to France as a teacher, I went as student to learn with colleagues how to design a education/training program in my University. On the first day I had a very ugly argument with the Dean because he defended that for the "culturally handicapped" people of Argelian origin.....bla, bla...the goals of the program. I questionned him about the concept of "cultural handicap" that for me didn't make sense. At the time I was an arrogant 24/25 y.o. "know it all in the tip of my tongue", discussing with the ex.minister that had conceived the French Social Minimum Revenue. I remember that for the 10 days I was there we had discussions at every lunch. At the end the "good old lyon" hadn't given up, but neither did I, and the French colleagues were astounded how I dared to defy the Master. Well, I was not going to stay there under his orders, and even if I did, I bet I would have made Mr. Lenoir change his conceptions about handicap and culture. But we were friends and oppositers for many years, until he died some (quite a few) years ago.

Well, if it's any comfort, when I first visited the UK I was an undergraduate, and one of the nine American students from the University that they'd hosted for the first time that year--we were a bit of an experiment for them. At the beginning of the first term they herded all the Americans into a room and told us, among other things, that our grades would be based on exams at the end of the academic year, and that we would fail them, but that would be nothing to worry about because they would "translate" those failing grades as grades at the University of California, so we shouldn't worry. We all looked at each other in absolute rage. Americans from the University of California automatically have lower IQs or lower capacities or both? We didn't think so. At the end of the year I think there must have been considerable surprise: we all did well, I and know there was one First. I suspect they didn't haul the next year's UC students into a room and tell them they'd flunk their exams. UC students have been going there happily ever since. That was one of the two very brief uncomfortably anti-American experiences I had in a wonderful, fun, very enriching and academically exciting year.

weary wrote:Well, if it's any comfort, when I first visited the UK I was an undergraduate, and one of the nine American students from the University that they'd hosted for the first time that year--we were a bit of an experiment for them. At the beginning of the first term they herded all the Americans into a room and told us, among other things, that our grades would be based on exams at the end of the academic year, and that we would fail them, but that would be nothing to worry about because they would "translate" those failing grades as grades at the University of California, so we shouldn't worry. We all looked at each other in absolute rage. Americans from the University of California automatically have lower IQs or lower capacities or both? We didn't think so. At the end of the year I think there must have been considerable surprise: we all did well, I and know there was one First. I suspect they didn't haul the next year's UC students into a room and tell them they'd flunk their exams. UC students have been going there happily ever since. That was one of the two very brief uncomfortably anti-American experiences I had in a wonderful, fun, very enriching and academically exciting year.

I almost can see your lovely californian beauties frown Wowwwwww
I can imagine it must have been quite a treat.
I shouldn't reveal this, but I was in the beginning of the European Exchange Programs, and we/I facilitated sometimes, because the students had not been sufficiently informed about those programs - but they would have to do the equivalent at their Home Univs. Imagine a Polish coming to study in Portugal in course where the language is only portuguese... I had several cases, and I spent nights translating documents or searching for docs in english, if they used the language. But in some cases the students and teacher arrived so uninformed that you had to refuse - there was nothing you could do.

When I finished secondary school in Portugal - I think it's he equivalent to the High School in USA (12 years schooling), there was still a very politically vibrant ambiance in the country and my parents decided to send me to the Uk to go to College in a more quite environment. But they didn't preview that was a snob, snobber than the British snobs. When I started doing my candidacy interviewes I knew very little about the "pedigree" of the several colleges apart from the renowened ones that aren't necessarily the best to every line of education. And I remember going to several interviewes in London College, LSEPC, Eton, etc.... and always questioned why did I have so many A levels. In Portugal we had an education system where it was obligatory to choose 6 nuclear A level subjects from a certain "branch" (that was nothing, my parents had had 10 obligatory A levels), I had chosen natural sciences, physics and maths and the Language and Portuguese Literature, Philosophy and Ethics and Politics were compulsory. I had also 9 O levels. To make it short, they started to say I knew too much. How come I knew British and World History? Why did I study French? Why Applied Maths if I wanted Psy? Dynamic Physics, what for? ...and so on and so on. And in my seventeen naive inexperience I started to think they were making fun of me.
Then I started talking with the other aplicants and I discovered that you only needed 2 or 3 A levels and 4 or 5 O according to your choice of the education nuclear.
I had come from a country where you couldn't choose. You were offered a trail that you followed for a certain number of courses and that was all. Nobody ever knew too much, you always knew too little. To know only about your own country and not the Ancient, Medieval and Modern History was unnacceptable. Not know about science, Philosophy, Universal literature (I had read French literature that the interviewers in the London School of Economics didn't know...) Not knowing the basics on Physics was too strange...
The snob little "sardine-muncher" (copyright to Parsons) was starting to rise. The Brits were ignorant. The teachers didn't know the history of their own country, the students didn't know other authors from world literature, ...the guiseeeeeeeee in Psychology with such ignorance at the start had a course in 3 years, in Portugal it was 5, plus one of intensive supervised training.
Little me enjoyed all the lols in the bright lighted city, developped a taste for contemporary culture, became even more devoted to jazz music and literature, but....................
Mother, they are ignorant! Help...
I want my 5 year education in College. I did, only to learn that after 5 years education, the investigation in "heavy psy" institutions was forbiden - Mr. Fromm was a darling to our leftist politicians at the time.


Going back to the OP, I think that Mr.Mrs McCanns and their journo friends are taking all non-brit as fools, and we are not.

To everyone who has posted on this thread I want to say I feel physically sick at the articles I have read in the British press today that bear no resemblance to the truth or reality. I am only a lowly English law clerk and only tend to meet non British people on holiday, but I will say that when I am abroad the one thing I will avoid is fellow Brits!! When I see the impeccable behaviour and politeness of European kids it makes me despair at what we have at home sometimes. I wish I could put this type of journalism down to sheer ignorance but its not. I now have some understanding of what some celebs must feel when an untruthful article is printed about them, but they have no real chance of redress. The power of the press is such that truth is secondary.

Luz an amazing post, i think we all need to understand a little more about Portugal, its education system, history etc., then I hope there wouldnt be such xenophobic claptrap in the UK Media. How some must laugh at us, and be shocked at the behaviour of some of our educated morons.

Harryhifi dont despair, change is a coming.

I hope so Tanszi. I really do. The problem is it looks like the McCs have asked for this when they clearly haven't.

I dont think that really matters Harryhifi, and Lord Toby Harris is already saying that in the House and expressing his concerns, dont fear, hold fast, not every is taken in.

Just want to say Ill bet Tony Bennett is pleased about this, he's been asking for a UK investigation for years. Funny how things happen.

Thanks Tanszi. I've been off work most of this week on sick leave and feel a little sorry for myself so maybe that's why today's articles have upset me so much, but all I can think of is a tiny little girl crying, and no-one comes to help her. Why can't all the pro's see that?