Madeleine McCann: Reading Amaral’s Book, Free Speech And Elvis
MADDIE WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann, Kate McCann and Gerry McCann…
THE GUARDIAN: “On the front line in the search for Maddie - Gonçalo Amaral’s intriguing memoir of the Madeleine McCann case offers no solution but reveals a man obsessed by the investigation”
Ned Temko is reading Amaral’s book:
It is a shame that this revealing memoir from Gonçalo Amaral, the police chief who ran the Madeleine McCann investigation until he was unceremoniously fired last year, has not been published in English…
Indeed it is. And a disappointment that no British paper has sought to serialise the work. Aren’t we interested in what the copper thinks? Or are we too scared to publish it? What of free speech, then?
Wouldn’t any reader of sound mind dismiss slights against the McCanns’ involvement?
Within minutes of its appearance in Portuguese bookshops, the McCanns’ spokesman let it be known their lawyers would be giving it a thorough read, with an eye to the kind of libel action that ended up costing the Express group £500,000 earlier this year. And that was before the Portuguese authorities finally cleared the couple last month of any suspicion.
We’ve been scared off. But:
Surely it won’t be long before enterprising translators feed the juicier bits to an online conspiracy community that, in the 15 months since the cherubic three-year-old went missing from Praia da Luz, has elevated Madeleine into something close to a new Elvis.
Has she been seen in America?
Or in the phrase Amaral prefers to use, with no evident trace of irony, in the book’s acknowledgements: ‘cybernauts and bloggers who have been defending the cause of truth and justice.’
Or just proclaiming themselves “pro” or “anti” McCann, as if that helps:
Yet even for those of us who happen to believe that Elvis is no more, the book offers a page-turning compendium of unexplained puzzles - as are so frequently found in wide-ranging, complex investigations.
LIVERPOOL ECHO: “Why we shouldn’t be frightened of the big, wide world”
Fiona Ennys plays Tabloid Bingo! Eyes down…
CATHERINE Mullany’s murder on the ‘paradise’ island of Antigua was awful and tragic.
Tick!
People like me who, until the expansion of package travel in the 1960s never saw further than perhaps Blackpool or Scarborough, now have the opportunity to visit supremely exotic destinations like Asia and Africa.
And..?
And it’s fantastic.
Phew! Go on…
It’s so easy to be lulled into a false sense of security when you are on holiday; the family of little Madeleine McCann know, only too painfully, about that.
Tick!
THE SUNDAY TIMES: “Big Yin on a voyage to explore big waste - Billy Connolly is recreating the Arctic journeys of two great pioneers for ITV”
ITV approached Connolly as part of its drive to get more factual “big access pieces” for the 8pm-9pm slots following on from the success of documentaries on JK Rowling and Madeleine McCann.
That’s entertainment (sha-la-la-la-la)…
Posted: 3rd, August 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comments (284) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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August 4th, 2008 at 6:35 am
48 Questions, Round 2.
interesting. talk about Leave No Stone Unturned and blaming the whole world and its dog for your shortcomings. all YOU need is an avalanche with your name written on it.
The Victory of Good Over Evil.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:10 am
None are so bitter than the bitter. http://tinyurl.com/6s7kxt
August 4th, 2008 at 6:00 am
Looks like it’s just you and me ?
And I’m just off for a shower
Can you put the coffee on?
I’ll have a cup - black, two sugars, when I come out
Cheers!
August 4th, 2008 at 5:54 am
very quiet on site.
testing testing 1 2 3
August 4th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Wheres coc co? or Veritable?
HUH!!!???
__________________
m&a
VQ consigned to chillout room for a while
coco awol
-meercat
August 4th, 2008 at 2:48 am
thats for anyone whoever walked down the uxbridge road !
( and didnt kill anyone)
August 4th, 2008 at 2:45 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLZ2aQz8KVE&feature=related
Have to come down ! fitting song for us all
I need some eye candy before bed too
August 4th, 2008 at 2:38 am
shit fuck wank ! its nearly 3! I am suposed to swim 30 lengths in 7 hours!
_____________
m&a
lunacy
-meercat
August 4th, 2008 at 2:35 am
I, as you Maria, will just sit this one out and watch the circus with close interest and the performances in the side rings. Yet, we could look on it as being back in the early centuries and watching the Gladiator fights at the coliseums or the lions being set loose on the Christians
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GLadiators killed their first born didnt they ?
__________________
m&a
jaysus brandon!
edited
-meercat
August 4th, 2008 at 2:16 am
Maria Says:
August 3rd, 2008 at 9:23 pm
whoops, Fair and Duncan and others
Love Irish songs, and you all have delightful voices, but have to depart now. My voice will NOT be missed, I assure you. Enjoy.
Cheryl
Just imagine it once the documents are freely available to be pored over and pawed over, and even poured over, by all and sundry. OMG, everyone will become a petit Hercule Poirot (but with fewer little grey cells!) and imagine themselves the greatest detectives alive. Can’t bear the thought of it. Think I’ll stay away. Anyway….how long will it take to read the files?
Really “Good night.” now, to all. Ironing to do. Ugh. May look back in a couple of hours.
________
Maria, it has been hit or miss for me today to have time to access here. So sorry I missed you. The mood is already set on here for tomorrow with many of the less than pleasant arrogant posters starting nasty remarks and sniping already at others…I did see a couple of uncivilized posts re you and not surprised to see which ones joined in on them. You are quite intelligent, Maria, your postings make sense without being overbearing, you are a very civilized person and one can imagine how uncomfortable that makes the sometimes uncivilized posters on here and thus feel the need to strike out at you.
Maria, it is time consuming to review legal documents but if you know what you are after you can speed read/scan down the page quite fast and certain words will jump out at you … requires concentration and no distraction. I can well imagine the amount of staff who had been assigned to fast review as soon as documents were made available to the lawyers. I don’t know about the UK but here law firms will bring in temporary lawyers or paralegals on cases where literally thousands of files have to be reviewed from companies who actually ‘hire’ them out to firms who need them. Akin to a temp agency except a temp agency that lawyers or paralegals who don’t want to work full time with a law firm sign up for temporary assignments. They have to sign all kinds of confidentiality papers, etc. so nothing gets out.
I, as you Maria, will just sit this one out and watch the circus with close interest and the performances in the side rings. Yet, we could look on it as being back in the early centuries and watching the Gladiator fights at the coliseums or the lions being set loose on the Christians …
August 4th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Annie1
If your mother remembers Brasco da Gama she is probably older than 90.
Really very funny, and poetic whn sha talks about human rocks.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:00 am
never stay out all night over the age of 35!
You never recver like you did when you were 20
_________________
m&a
i hear you sister
-meercat
August 4th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Some information has been edited out, including a list of known and suspected paedophiles who were living in the Algarve at the time Maddie disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment.
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The video of the specialist sniffer dogs reacting to alleged traces of blood and the ’scent of death’ in the apartment and the McCanns’ hire car will be released at a later date.
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Under Portuguese law any police officer, witness or suspect who spoke about the inquiry risked a two-year jail sentence for breaking the secrecy code.
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The release will finally expose the controversial investigation to the full glare of public scrutiny.
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August 4th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Madeleine dossier will finally be made public after Portuguese secrecy laws are lifted
Last updated at 01:25am on 04.08.08
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23525563-details/Madeleine+dossier+will+finally+be+made+public+after+Portuguese+secrecy+laws+are+lifted/article.do
The contents of the Madeleine McCann case files will be unlocked today, ending 15 months of leaks, smears and innuendo.
The secrecy of justice laws surrounding the Portuguese police investigation will be lifted, allowing public access to the documents.
Every witness statement, tip-off and lead followed by detectives since Madeleine’s disappearance on May 3 last year is contained in the mammoth file, along with the transcripts of interviews with her parents and British ex-pat Robert Murat.
The Maddie dossier is due for release following pressure from the McCanns after a painful 15 month wait
Kate and Gerry McCann’s legal team has had access to the 11,000-page file since last week, after the Portuguese attorney general formally shelved the inquiry and cleared them and Mr Murat as suspects.
The McCanns, both 40, are desperately hoping the file contains a missed clue which could lead them to their daughter.
The couple have several teams of detectives on standby ready to travel across the world to check any potential leads.
Their spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: ‘Our lawyers have begun looking at the files. They are discovering what was done - and crucially what was not done - in the investigation to find Madeleine.
Maddie
The McCanns are desperately hoping the files contain an overlooked clue which could lead them to their missing daughter
‘All previously unknown leads will be passed to our investigators, who are poised to check them out.’
Until now the only people to have seen the case files are the McCanns’ lawyers, the detectives who led the inquiry, and the public prosecutors and judges overseeing the inquiry.
But at 2pm today an edited version of the dossier will be released to more than 1,000 journalists who applied to the prosecutor for permission to view it.
Demand to see the case file has been so great that court officials have scanned the pages into a computer and compiled them on DVDs.
Kate McCann
A version of the dossier will be released to more than 1,000 journalists
Some information has been edited out, including a list of known and suspected paedophiles who were living in the Algarve at the time Maddie disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment.
The video of the specialist sniffer dogs reacting to alleged traces of blood and the ’scent of death’ in the apartment and the McCanns’ hire car will be released at a later date.
The release will finally expose the controversial investigation to the full glare of public scrutiny.
Issues that may be highlighted are the failure to alert border patrols in the first 12 hours, and any missed leads or queries over forensic evidence.
Strict secrecy laws supposedly protected the investigation until it was archived last month.
Under Portuguese law any police officer, witness or suspect who spoke about the inquiry risked a two-year jail sentence for breaking the secrecy code.
But in practice officials within the investigation regularly briefed selected Portuguese journalists with details from the inquiry, in apparent attempts to pressure Mr and Mrs McCann into confessing their alleged involvement.
Later these seemed aimed at poisoning public opinion against them.
The couple believe the decision to name them as suspects, or arguidos, could have set back their own search for their daughter, as vital witnesses might not have contacted them with information if they believed the pair were involved.
Much of the leaking was blamed on the former head of the police inquiry, Goncalo Amaral, who last month published a book containing many of the same vile smears against the couple and their friends.
August 4th, 2008 at 1:36 am
I have got a chatelaine - its a lot of trinkets attached to a chain that you keep around your waist until they are needed - mine is silver and it has a thimble - to stop me getting the needle, a little bottle of smelling salts, a pair of blunt scissors, and pot of rouge with a magnifying mirror, a propelling pencil, a needle case with tiny reels of cotton and a blade. There is also a crucifix. All of these things are nice to have around, pretty useless in a crisis
___________________
m&a
like a builders belt for domestic stuff, what a great idea.
very practical I’d add a small pen knife too
-meercat
August 4th, 2008 at 1:34 am
I must go too.
Good night Brandon et al
August 4th, 2008 at 1:32 am
must go night XX
August 4th, 2008 at 1:31 am
# Châtelaine Says:
August 4th, 2008 at 1:28 am
brandon flours Says:
August 4th, 2008 at 1:24 am
And I thought you were a girl !
****
You’re talking to me???
A pain in the neck is too soft an expression, yet a châtelaine would never say a pain in the *ss. So … it’s a “pain” in the something. My spelling may be lacking, though …
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I got it wrong
sorry ! Talking to a teenager confused me!
August 4th, 2008 at 1:28 am
brandon flours Says:
August 4th, 2008 at 1:24 am
And I thought you were a girl !
****
You’re talking to me???
A pain in the neck is too soft an expression, yet a châtelaine would never say a pain in the *ss. So … it’s a “pain” in the something. My spelling may be lacking, though …
August 4th, 2008 at 1:26 am
annie
My dad went like that, they are as honest and as astute as pre school children!
August 4th, 2008 at 1:24 am
And I thought you were a girl !
August 4th, 2008 at 1:19 am
brandon flours Says:
August 4th, 2008 at 1:15 am
Châtelaine
Aye I do!
:-D 
facinating revelations huh ? Well not really! We knew
I aim too run up 100 posts tomorrow by no mistake
for old times sake
*****
and your dreams are a “pain” in the something …
August 4th, 2008 at 1:18 am
My mother is nearly 90 years old, and I must admit to not taking much notice of anything she says - BUT, I went to see her today and she asked me if anything had become of the search for the “Portugese Girl” - I told her that nothing had been resolved and she said “She was crushed between the rocks - human rocks” I asked her what she meant and she said to me - you are too young to understand - ask me again when you are a bit older…………I am 62!! Then she went to sleep. If I ask her again tomorrow she will not know what I am talking about. But then, she told me last week that Brasco da Gama would be US President !!
August 4th, 2008 at 1:15 am
Châtelaine
Aye I do!
facinating revelations huh ? Well not really! We knew
I aim too run up 100 posts tomorrow by no mistake
for old times sake
August 4th, 2008 at 1:11 am
When the files are reported in the uk media ( HAAAAAA!!!! ASIF)
It will no longer be forum myths, no evidence, slanderous rumours to my friends from the other side
cool, garth, maria, ferdinand, cheryl and the wannabes anymore.
I want a point by point essay on my desk by noon
48 of them !!!!!
August 4th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Aye, Brandon. You have wicked dreams …
August 4th, 2008 at 1:06 am
Chatelaine - Surely not - they could not have undergone IVF treatment without a camera up their backsides - unless of course this one is a natural or devine conception? I doubt either
August 4th, 2008 at 1:03 am
then i turned over had a fart and dreamt this too
- At 10am, K told YM that M had been missing for 13 hours. (That would mean the disappearance was at 9pm and not 10pm.)
This information is important, given that other differing versions of events would also be provided by the McCs and their friends.
- YM, before the “close friend” rejoined them and told YM that the McCs didn’t want to talk to her anymore, took the time to alert the McCns to the fact that they should be careful with the media, advising them to remain silent.
- YM, from the moment she met the McCas and the friend, thought his face seemed familiar. She thought she knew him from work, perhaps having been involved in some case that passed through her hands, in the area of protection of minors.
- Later YM would identify this close friend as Dane, the organizer of the holidays, and the one who was sldo independently pointed out to the British police (by SG and KG), for his questionable behaviour during the Mallorca holiday.
- With the Eish police, the Porese investigators tried to find out if Dane had any judicial or police reports, but nothing was found in his records.
- The only information known is that Dane is a close friend of Geann, since university.
I watch too much CSI and cold case IMO allegedly
August 4th, 2008 at 12:57 am
I just had a really weird dream
4 MAY, 7h00, the village of Sargaçal, near Luz
- YM, 52 years old, British manager of Social Services, Protection of Minors, with 28 yrs of experience in the area of children at risk, is on holiday in the Algarve. Sees Luz/Mne news on the TV. Decides to go help.
- 9:30am-ish, with the help of police at the scene, she finds Ms parents. They are with someone introduced as a “close friend” of the family.
- The parents are very upset, but only the mother is crying intensely.
- YM begins to ask questions; how often were they checking (response: once an hour), is Gy the biological father of Mae (to eliminate the possibility of abduction by bio fthr).
- Kmc becomes unnerved by the questions. They should come from the police. According to K, there should have been a lot more police there trying to find her daughter who had been taken “by a couple.”
- YM, thinking the McCns were doubting her qualifications, produced her official documents emitted by the police and the British government.
- G shows the documents to the close friend, who says the docs are authentic. But this does not make them supportive of the help offered by YM.
- So YM tries a desperate move: she tries to separate K from the other two, inviting her to another place to clarify this story of the “couple” that according to K had taken her child.
- K reacts agressively and refuses to leave her two companions.
- YM is concerned about Kate’s agitation, and verifies that Khasn’t received any medical support, which she is needing.
————————————-
What a weird dream !!
August 4th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Maravilha Says:
August 4th, 2008 at 12:46 am
Brandon, I’m not sure but I think the arguido status was lifted on July, 21st.
****
Hi Brandon, Fair, Maravilha.
Yes, it was. See my link above [and here] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7518303.stm
Seems she’s kind of hyperventilating.
How many of “us” think she’s pregnant?
August 4th, 2008 at 12:51 am
Hello everyone - I am a bit knacked so can anyone tell me in a nutshell what has been going on to day - I have just popped in before beddybyes and have that - well you all know about it - urge to know the latest mc.saga before turning in. Thank you (in anticipation)