No settlement

Carolina wrote:For those who were afraid that Gonçalo was going to give in, here he is standing firm and ready to fight in the court room. Bravo!

Claudia79 wrote:Wonder how our friend Palmeras is feeling...

jinvta wrote:Why would the Algarve Daily News print the following:

"The ban of the book and the video, in which Gonçalo Amaral claims that Kate and Gerry McCann were involved in the disappearance of their daughter and in the concealment of her body, has been in place since September 9th 2009."

This is not a true statement, the ban of the book and the video was overturned in a court of appeals and upheld by a superior court with no further avenues of appeal. Why the misinformation?

Still don't see how the McCanns have a leg to stand on given that the book ban was overturned and the publishing of the book was deemed constitute free speech. The McCanns and their deep pockets of the fund and their expensive lawyers think they can bully everyone into submission. Well their tactics aren't working on Amaral and Bennett and will surely soon backfire in a court just as they have in public opinion.

The ban on the book and the documentary was lifted on 18 October 2010 by the Tribunal de Relação de Lisboa as the deemed that his book only reflects the conclusions of the investigation up until he left the force.

Claudia79 wrote:The biggest card that GA's defence will use in court will be one provided by the McCanns themselves. And that is truly ironic.

Claudia79 wrote:The biggest card that GA's defence will use in court will be one provided by the McCanns themselves. And that is truly ironic.

cass wrote:

Claudia79 wrote:The biggest card that GA's defence will use in court will be one provided by the McCanns themselves. And that is truly ironic.

claudia would the mcanns have to attend court -- or can they hide away like they did with tb ?

Claudia79 wrote:The biggest card that GA's defence will use in court will be one provided by the McCanns themselves. And that is truly ironic.

Lillyofthevalley wrote:

Claudia79 wrote:The biggest card that GA's defence will use in court will be one provided by the McCanns themselves. And that is truly ironic.

Claudia I'm a bit slow on picking things up sometimes

Can you explain please

Turning now to the libel case itself. The simply crazed suggestion that GA has asked for terms, and the even crazier idea that Kate McCann would take her fingernails out of GA's eyeballs unless she was dragged off by male nurses, implies that he sees no possible hope of winning the case. Dear oh dear, oh dear. No hope?

The libel writ has only been released to the two papers with most to lose from Amaral's vengeance who've been in the pockets of the parents since 2007, never to the millions of suckers who believe in the pair and contributed to the fund – the Mirror and the People. From what they have published there were three main grounds in the writ.

That Amaral's claims were false.
That, in addition, the claims had caused enormous psychological and behavioural damage to the couple which deserved financial compensation.
And that the "search for Madeleine" had been, and was continuing to be, damaged by the inference from GA's "thesis" that the child was dead.

Forget the propaganda war and forget the spin. Just going on judicial processes and Kate McCann's own words they no longer have a claim under any of these three heads.

1. Amaral's claims were false

A complete defence to Claim One is that "the defendant had good reason to believe his allegations were true and were made in good faith." The Lisbon injunction hearing in 2010 heard evidence from officers in the case that, based on their investigation, they were all of the same opinion as Amaral that the McCanns had presented "a fairy tale" of abduction. The archiving summary "on the reconstruction" detailed the evidence against the nine which still existed at the time of archiving. Clearly he had, and has, good reason.

The final appeal hearing put on judicial record that the Amaral interpretation of the case up to its archiving was of the same level of validity and good faith as the interpretation which the prosecutor had made in authorising shelving on the grounds of innocence of the arguidos. Therefore there was no evidence of "bad faith". As the Bureau pointed out last year the judgement in the Amaral v Marcos Aragão Correia libel case found for the latter on exactly those grounds.

Amaral has a 100% defence.

2. Psychological and behavioural damage to the couple.

Whatever Duarte claimed in 2009 Kate McCann's words in Madeleine, as well as the couple's actions since, demonstrate the falsity of this claim. In the final chapter of the book Kate McCann describes the various severe difficulties she and Gerry McCann have suffered since 2007. None of these are attributed to the statements or actions of Amaral or match the list of symptoms given by their lawyer in the writ. The only conclusive effect that Kate McCann claims Amaral had on her was to make her psychopathically furious with him: if everyone who makes Kate McCann insanely angry was sued for libel the justice system would grind to a halt.Either she is lying now or she was lying in the statement of claim.

In that same chapter she refers to events which demonstrate that she was undamaged by Amaral in the way she claimed. She refers to going onto the Oprah Winfrey show, in which her state can be seen in recordings, to dancing and going to social functions. Photographic evidence confirms this.

The claims have not a shred of evidence so far to support them and appear to be contradicted in detail by her book.

3. "Damaging or preventing the search."

This was always going to be near-impossible to prove given that the onus in Portugal lies on the claimant, not the defendant. In 2013 the situation for the claimants is much worse. The only "evidence" that Kate McCann has revealed publicly is either hearsay or her "belief". The matter is so subjective that there would have to be very convincing quantitative, not qualitative, evidence to make a judge even consider the claim. There is none that we know of.

Secondly the "search" to which the claimants were referring no longer exists, having been stopped in March 2012. The McCann website states that it was stopped because the Scotland Yard review is now doing the "searching". No claim that Amaral's thesis could affect the Yard search has been made by the McCanns nor, obviously, could it be made bearing in mind the statements of Redwood on behalf of the inquiry. So the claim is not just wrong but a non-sequiter.

No evidence for the claim. Written evidence to the contrary.

Does anyone seriously believe that Amaral or his lawyer would be pleading with the McCanns to drop their case given these facts? We'd love to know the evidence that anyone can produce on the net to refute the three statements we've made above. Sooner or later the parents are going to have to face the reality of the situation. The longer they pretend the more crushing the defeat.