And this is my advice (quotations from "The Times" story are in
bold, my advice is in regular characters):
(...)
As everyone is acutely aware, the reason we know so little about Madeleine’s disappearance is because she was abducted in Portugal, where the segredo de justiça law prevents the police from putting information about a criminal investigation in the public domain. Had Madeleine disappeared in Britain or the US, this would not have happened.Right. But you know that these damned secrecy laws also exist in many other European countries, namely those countries on the other side of the British Channel, like Sweden, Netherlands, France, Spain, Greece. I would say the “segredo de justiça law”, as you wrote, exists in some 24 of the 25 countries of the European Union. Now, maybe you can help me with something that has puzzled me, since the begging of this case: in UK, there is no secrecy law, right? Journalists are informed any time British Police has a new suspect in a crime investigation, right? Witnesses and victims of a crime can tell the journalists all details about what happened, right? So, how does British Police manages to keep crime investigations going on without, for example, the suspects running away, as soon as their names are printed at all newspapers? One more question about this subject: why wasn’t this policy of openness applied in The Soham murders case? I watched it, every day, at Sky News (every 15 minutes...) and at BBC and never heard specific details about the ongoing investigation...
We don’t know exactly when Madeline was reported missing, and I am told that none of the published time lines relating to May 3 are accurate.And when Gerry and Kate McCann say that they discovered Madeleine was missing around 10:00 pm, May 3, this is also not accurate?
I have also learned that the Portuguese response system is slow and unwieldy (...) Of course the McCanns’ bid for information from the public, unsupported by details of the abduction, had already been hamstrung by the investigation’s slow start.Really? Some British holidaymakers and Mr. John Hill, manager of Ocean Resort gave a different perspective (and they were there, at that night...). Just a few phrases, taken from several British newspapers:
- “ (...)The manager of the resort, John Hill said around 60 staff and guests at the complex had searched until 4.30am while local police notified border police, Spanish police and airports.” –
The Telegraph, May 5, 2007;
- “ (...) Portuguese police yesterday sealed off the three-storey block and forensic specialists fingerprinted the ground floor window of the McCanns' apartment. All airports, ports and border posts have been alerted. But despite a massive search throughout the night by police, sniffer dogs and dozens of holidaymakers, there has been no sign of Madeleine (...) –
This is London, May 4, 2007;
- “ (... )The McCanns scoured the lanes above the resort, shouting for her in the dark. Police notified border police, Spanish police and airports and deployed sniffer dogs (...) there were conflicting reports yesterday of how effective the Portuguese police operation has been.” -
The Independent, May 5, 2007;
- “ (...) A family friend, Jill Renwick, told GMTV that police activity ground to a halt at 3am. But Mr Hill said this was not true, and that police had been searching with dogs overnight and continued to search today. He said: ‘The police have their dogs in and have been conducting sweeps of the beach and rocky areas very close to the village. There is a criminal investigator here in charge of the situation and about 20 officers." –
The Independent, May 5, 2007;
- "There are a criminal investigator and around 20 officers here but unfortunately there's still no information. If I was in the McCanns' situation, I'd be frustrated as hell. If there were 100 police here I'd want more (...)” -
The Mirror, May 5, 2007;
- “ (...) Officers sealed off the five-storey holiday block with crime scene tape and fingerprinted the shutters and window sill outside Maddy's room. A patio to the rear of the block, believed to be attached to the family's two-bedroom apartment, was also sealed off. –
The Mirror, May 5, 2007;
- “ (...) By late afternoon the hunt for Maddy had intensified with helicopter crews, firemen and maritime search teams involved. A special criminal investigation team from the Policia Judiciria was travelling down from Lisbon. Sky News weather presenter Jo Wheeler said local police had been giving out maps and telling people where to look. She said: ‘It's very well organised." -
The Mirror, May 5, 2007;
The McCanns’ call to the police was received in Portimão, a 30-minute drive away, and the practice is for a local officer to attend the scene to assess whether a crime has been committed and whether to call for help. I had a different information. As the first Police officers to arrive at the crime scene were from Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR) I called Lieutenant-Colonel Costa Cabral, head of Public Relations at Guarda Nacional Republicana headquarters, in Lisbon
(phone number, email address are here). He told me that first call to GNR precinct at Lagos was received at 10.50 pm, May 3, and only after Police oficcers went there and evaluated the situation, CID in POrtimão was called.
Police officers drove to apartment 5A at the Ocean Club where the McCanns were staying, then referred the case to the Policia Judiciaria in Portimão.Right. Two GNR officers went to Ocean Club (a 10/15 minutes drive, from Lagos), evaluated the situation and than they called CID in Portimão, 25 km from Praia da Luz. They assembled a team and they were at the crime scene between 11h40, 11h50 pm, May 3.
Thus vital time was lost immediately after Madeleine’s disappearance – when it was imperative that the investigation should become active.
Indeed. I think that vital time was lost between the moment Kate McCann realized her daughter was missing, around 10h00 pm, and the moment the first call was received at Police precinct, in Lagos: 50 minutes, time enough for a car to drive from Praia da Luz, following the highway A22, close to the Spanish border (a border that doesn’t exist, because since the Shengen Agreement was signed, countries that are members have no border control posts and can not put a road block in a border without asking, before, permission to do that, to the Shengen authority). Who is responsible for that, I'm not sure, yet.
Add to that the parents’ status as doctors, people who save lives, yet who leave their children, Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings, without adult supervision in an apartment while they eat at a tapas bar a 52-second walk away, and the chattering classes are simultaneously full of sympathy and hooked.
52 seconds away? Interesting way of looking at this subject. But I think you have to walk fast, no? I did part of that walk (on the road behind the buildings where apartment 5A is located) and I was almost sure it took me as long as that. Anyway, as I am close to Praia da Luz, I’ll go there again, today, at lunch time, and I’ll do that walk once more.
“It’s a quiet, safe resort,” says Gerry when we meet in a borrowed flat. “The distance from the apartment to the restaurant was 50 yards. We dined in the open-air bit and you can actually see the veranda of the apartment. It’s difficult because if you are [at home] cutting grass in the back with the mower, and that takes me about half an hour, and the children are upstairs in a bedroom, you’d never bat an eyelid. That’s similar to how we felt. We’ve been unfortunately proved wrong, out of the blue. It’s shattered everything.”
"50 yards"? "We dined in the open-air bit and you can actually see the veranda of the apartment"? Well, take a look at
these pictures. 50 yards is less than 50 meters, right?
This is the first time that the McCanns have confirmed that the apartment was broken into. This information does not compromise Madeleine’s safety, and rules out one of the numerous red herring theories that the police have explored, that Madeleine wandered away on her own. There is no logic in withholding it from the public.People in charge at
Mark Warner, the British company that runs
Ocean Club, seems to have a different opinion, and I quote:
- “(...) Mark Warner, the holiday firm which runs the luxury resort, claimed last night there was no sign of a break in at the ground floor apartment overlooking the sea.” –
Guardian Online, May 5, 2007;
- “(...) the apartment the (McCann) family were staying in was surrounded by other apartments, all of which have "quite sophisticated" locks on the doors.” – Mr. John Hill, manager of Ocean Club,
Guardian Online, May 4, 2007;
- “(...) Mark Warner management denied there were signs of forced entry at the flat claiming instead that roller shutters had been slid up and the bedroom window opened.” –
The Mirror, May 5, 2007;
- “ (...) Although forensic officers fingerprinted the window sill of the ground floor apartment and sealed off its private patio, a spokesman for Mark Warner said there had been no evidence of a forced entry. However, the shutters had been slid up and the bedroom window opened after the McCanns had left.” –
The Independent, May 5, 2007;
Then things started to go wrong. By the end of the second week of August, when the McCanns marked the 100th day since Madeleine’s disappearance by launching a YouTube initiative to help to find missing children, the Portuguese media had suggested that the McCanns could have killed their daughter, and the British press was not shy about repeating and even revelling in the “monstrous slurs”. Coincidentally that was the week I first visited Praia da Luz (...)”
What a pity I didn’t know you were there! I could have called you and invited you for a coffee. It’s curious, from August 9 to August 26, I also worked for the The Times, covering Madeleine’s case from Praia da Luz (where I am, at this moment, so if you are still around, after interviewing the McCann, what about a coffee at Batista?) and I even did a
front-page story, with the help of my colleague Duarte Levy, and two other good stories (If I may I say that...):
this one and
this one.
They (the McCann) tend not to pick up the more sickly nuances within the press, because they don’t read it; instead the campaign team (which consists of the full-time lobbyist the McCanns hired after the fund was set up, plus two other part-timers who ensure seven-day-a-week cover to field the innumerable media inquiries) shows them what they need to see, including translations of Portuguese coverage.What a fantastic team! A full-time lobbyist and two part-timers doing all that! Seven-day-a-week cover to field the innumerable media inquiries and also translating news published in Portuguese Press! Hard-working people, indeed...
Brendan de Beer, the editor of the English language Portugal News, is the only journalist to have spoken at length to Chief Inspector Olegário Sousa, the spokesman for the PolÍcia Judiciária on the Madeleine investigation. Sousa, who has 20 years’ service and has previously focused on crimes relating to works of art, armed robberies and car-jacking, suggested that some information is being inadvertently leaked by officers at informal lunches with friends. De Beer is more specific and suggests that some of the more incongruous claims are no more than gossip.No, it isn’t. Many other Portuguese journalists have spoken at length, many times, to Chief Inspector Olegário de Sousa. I did it, also, several times. But, unfortunately (for us, journalists....) he does a good job. Talks a lot, but says nothing worth to be published.
Some of the police detectives involved in the case have spoken off the record, he says, and journalists have contacts within the police just as they do in Britain. “I’ve spoken to a couple of them [police officers], but never to an extent where they told me a syringe had been found in the room or there was blood on the keys of the hire car. That kind of information seems to come from police constables. You get someone who tells something to their wife, they tell their hairdresser, who tells a journalist.Mr. Brendan de Beer, tank's God you are not the kind of journalist that hears something from her or his hairdresser, who heard it from the wife of a constable, and publishes a story, based on that gossip, calling it a “source close to the investigation”. Of course, you are not. That’s something only Portuguese journalist do, right? Or did I get you wrong? Could you explain better what you mean by that?
Brendan de Beer: "I’d be very surprised if there was any bribery, though a constable does earn only about €600 or €700 a month, so it could happen."Mr. Brendan de Beer, that’s not a nice thing to say. That’s almost so serious as publishing a report saying that Police believe the McCann were responsible for the death of Madeleine Beth McCann. You would be surprised to hear that some constable was bribed but you know it could happen, as they only earn between €600 or €700 a month? So, that’s a possibility, right? Portuguese CID Chief-Inspectors earn a little bit more. Do you think that it may happen with a Portuguese CID Chief-Inspector? No? Only Portuguese constables are, let’s say, on the verge of being bribed in exchange for information, because of the low salaries they receive?
Not that British reporting has been irreproachable. The slurs have been widely dissected, a suspect has been invented by one needy tabloid, and when I (Penny Wark)
rang Paolo Marcilemo, the editor of the Correio da Manhã, which has a reputation for scurrilous reporting, he said that he was no longer giving interviews because the British press has misquoted him.You called Paolo Marcilemo, Editor of Correio da Manhã? Strange. There is a journalist called João Marcelino, who
was editor of Correio da Manhã – but he left on February, to
Diário de Notícias, where he has been the Editor, until today.
Paulo Marcelino, as far as I know, is a journalist from Correio da Manhã (and this is a
story he published on 27 August, about the “Sex Expo”, in Portimão). So, either you talked with the Editor of Diário de Notícias, João Marcelino, or you talked with the Editor of Correio da Manhã, Octávio Ribeiro. Or you talked with Paulo Marcelino, who is not the Editor of Correio da Manhã, but just a journalist? Some confusion, around here, no? Yes, I understand... Those strange, almost weird Portuguese names, the funny sound of the words that seem more like a
Slavic of
Middle Eastern language, those vowels so difficult to pronounce, with strange orthographic signals, like the letter “ç” in “caçar patos” (means “hunting ducks”...)
Portugal, like Spain and many other European countries, does not have a sex offenders’ register, and as for the UK, although a Child Rescue alert system was launched here last year, relying primarily on speedy contact with the media, it has yet to be tested. Neither does Britain have any reliable statistics on missing children, and this means that the scale of the problem is unknown. Indeed. We don’t have a so serious problem with paedophiles and sex offenders, as you have, in the UK. This is one thing I agree with you. Other thing I agree completely, is the tittle you choosed for your story: "Madeleine: one fact, many lies, endless grief". As we say in Portuguese, “Bingo!”. In French, it will be “Touché!”. In Chinese, people uses ”全中!”
Paulo Reis
PS: Is Penny Wark any relation to Kirsty Wark (who interviewed Gerry at Edinburgh)? This is not my question, just a question that
was posted at the comments box of Times Online, by Mr. LB, from Birmingham...
I think this lady had a good share of the seven (or 14, according to the source) bottles of wine the Tapas Group drank on May 3. She went out, back to her apartment, and she had a vision: a man, carrying a child. She couldn't saw his face. But she saw he had dark skin. As the man was dressed in pants and a coat, how did she managed to see the colour of his skin? How did she managed, at night, with almost no lights, in that area, to have a so clear look at the skin of that man?
