Mini report in the Guardian Sat 28 Sept of GM's visit to Portugal to testify in the trial.

Just a few paras: relatively unobjectionable, with a picture of GM at the bottom. Two important things were NOT correct IMHO

1 - It said of Madeleine that, as so many reports do, the McCanns had been 'cleared of any involvement in her disappearance'. AFAIK the case was shelved through lack of evidence, the McCanns were never charged with anything, so could not be 'cleared' in that sense.

2 - It said that Amaral was dropped from the case 'after cristicising the British police'. Again, this was not why he was dropped from the case... It was much more complicated than that! Moreover, 'the British police', and that must mean, I guess, the Leicestershire police who were dealing with the case from this end, were very much as one with the PJ for a lot of the time, and a senior investigator/co-ordinator is NOT just dropped and then chooses to retire for such a reason... that is daft.

The paras did mention Amaral's book, as the cause of the libel trial, but not, of course the conclusions of the official concluding report on the case made before shelving it, much of which the book mirrors. The mini article gave the book's title in English and said that GA said in it that M had died in the flat as the result of an accident, and that the parents had staged the abduction to cover this up. It did not use the word 'staged' but I am in the front room and the newspaper is now in the kitchen :-) so the general idea will have to do. None of the things above should really be taken as verbatim quotes from the newspaper but they are near as dammit.

That's the big problem comparedna, for some reason no British Newspaper has questioned the McCanns because Clarence has orchestrated everything. Had the McCannns not received such unprecedented Government support in the beginning, things might be quite differnet now.