Blacksmith:Please Question Us!

Please Question Us! Part Two






Tapas 7 seen volunteering to return to Portugal

Who Dunnit?

As usual the Bureau takes the conservative non-dramatic view of events, believing that, given these circumstances, Rebelo didn't have to be a clean-up man tasked with killing the investigation. It didn't need one. Whatever the speculation about cover-ups etc. the evidence above clearly suggests that the actual killers were the Tapas Nine, acting alone except for their lawyers.

It only needed Rebelo's PJ to make the understandable, if slightly dodgy, claim in their report that the rogatory interviews "revealed nothing new" (they hadn't even been translated, let alone analysed in depth) rather than "they don't get us any nearer an arrest and it's time to give up" and for Rebelo and Menezes to agree that further timescale extensions were not on, to end the investigation.

Unfortunately Menezes made a poor fist of his role. Naturally the "missing paragraph" required to explain a shelving despite a key area remaining unexplored couldn't have been written as frankly as we've given it above: that's not the way the world goes round and would have cost him and his colleague their jobs. His task, and challenge, though, was to justify the shelving while maintaining the integrity of the PJ and its investigation on the one hand, and avoiding leaving a black cloud of suspicion over two of the arguidos and their friends on the other. The latter would have caused uproar – claims of a smear job by the terrifying UK press and loud demands to lay hands on the McCanns by a dissatisfied Portuguese public, demands that, as we've seen, couldn't be met.

A Clever Plan

Menezes attempted to square this circle by minimizing the significance of the Nine' s behaviour and evidence while stressing how exhaustive the inquiry had been. The PJ report section on the needs of the reconstruction couldn't be omitted from the archiving summary since the PJ wouldn't permit it so Menezes attempted to counter its explosive implications by smothering them with love. Hence the embarrassing purple-prosed final paragraphs in which his rhetoric took wing with references to European literature, the art of the who-dunnit and the analytical power of the average man. All it lacked was a swooning reference to the "fragrance" of Kate McCann, such as a dribbling English judge had once made about a Mrs Archer during her well-known, and crooked, husband's libel case.

He made a mess of it. So intent was Menezes on being "fair" to the two arguidos that he skimmed, misread or minimised the evidence against them. Thus his summary used the collusive and in places untruthful first batch (May 4) of statements by the group, not the later ones in which they had been forced to change their stories under questioning; and he got them wrong too, the dolt, referring to Russell O'Brien leaving the Tapas restaurant with Mathew at 9 PM, for example. Russell? A mistake like that in an official prosecutors' report!* And with all the smothering the smoke was still visible, as in his famous reference to the McCanns being "victims". What were they terrible victims of, Menny, a miscarriage of justice? Why, they were victims, he said, of their wilful refusal to co-operate with the investigation, thus losing the chance to "demonstrate their innocence", poor lambs. Such victimhood.

So that was the archiving summary, their "exoneration".There's no need to waste any more words on this lamentable work. We repeat we can't see that Menezes, Rebelo or Monteiro had any choice but to wind up the affair as best they could, given the forensics, time-scale and their impotence in the face of the Nine. Menezes probably did the best he could.

Winners or Dreadful Losers?

But what about the Nine who had thus got away with refusing to co-operate, what did they achieve for themselves? The only defence any of them have regarding the fact of their killing off the police search for the child is that they believed that the Portuguese police were out to get them, but once you force your way through the self-pity it isn't much of one, is it? As so many people have said, your own safety is normally put to one side, or not even considered, when there is a chance, however small, of helping to save your child. As for most of the other seven, just what risks terrified them so much that they wouldn't return? Portugal isn't Iran or Putin's Russia and they were never at risk of lengthy custody. Yet they opted for cowardice, by their own account of events, or something worse if their accounts are untrue, abandoning a four year old child to her fate. Brrr! Chilly.

The McCanns: failed to demonstrate their innocence, according to the official summary report. The Seven: failed to assist for "unknown reasons" according to the official summary report. It seems incredible that nine adults should be content to have their reputations sullied for the rest of their lives by these official conclusions. That is the legacy of condemnation and suspicion they are going to leave their children.

It follows, naturally, that a new investigational review offers all of them their only chance of removing this blemish.It can't happen passively, as it were –simply waiting while a review/investigation which doesn't include the close examination of their stories is concluded. Even if the child's body is discovered that won't lift the cloud over them since, after many years, the circumstances in which she died may be no more conclusive than the circumstances of her disappearance. Only their willing assistance can give them all the chance to demonstrate their innocence.

That is why Kate and Gerry McCann should have been pleading with the Yard for the last eighteen months for the opportunity to answer any questions at all, no holds barred. And so should their cowardly friends.
this is tapas 7 seen volonteering lol

A Summative Overview (ie A one-liner) might be in order here - my eyes glazed over after a few paragraphs.

I used to like Blacksmith's offerings, whether I agreed with them or not, but the style has become less coherent and more rambling in recent months, thus seriously degrading their literary worth.

Yes I agree - less is more when it comes to keeping people's attention.

He also penned a blog recently which appeared to support the rights of paedophiles. Perhaps he was trying to be humorous but he hasn't as far as I know clarified his comments, only been abusive to people who queried them.

It's always seemed rather telling that the friends refused to attend the reconstruction. As Blacksmith says, what could they really fear?
I've often wondered if they were willing to turn a blind eye to certain things, but not willing to tell outright lies, hence their reluctance to attend the recon.

"It was a collective mistake" - thus spake Gerry McCann in a TV interview.

To me, this was a warning shot across the T7's bows - a dark reminder that they were 'all in it together'.

What 'it' was, of course, is a mystery not yet solved. But it might be understandable to conclude that as yet the T7 are still more scared of that shared secret and more scared of the McCanns and their many-tentacled power network than they are of any law enforcement operations.
When that balance is redressed, ie the full weight of the law becomes the greater threat, then there may be some shift towards cooperation.
Whatever dirt the McCanns hold over them, there must be a whole heap of it.

And for now, as Blacksmith says:
"It seems incredible that nine adults should be content to have their reputations sullied for the rest of their lives by these official conclusions. That is the legacy of condemnation and suspicion they are going to leave their children."

"Yet they opted for cowardice, by their own account of events, or something worse if their accounts are untrue, abandoning a four year old child to her fate."

Cowardice indeed. He's damn right about that.

The End Is Nigh wrote:A Summative Overview (ie A one-liner) might be in order here - my eyes glazed over after a few paragraphs.

I used to like Blacksmith's offerings, whether I agreed with them or not, but the style has become less coherent and more rambling in recent months, thus seriously degrading their literary worth.

I agree totally...
I didn't get further than a couple of lines. What was this all about?