11. Missing Children Alert: Frattini used the well-known case of Madeleine McCann, a missing British girl, to lay out his intention to develop an EU wide alert system for missing children. Frattini specifically and repeatedly mentioned the Amber Alert system in the U.S. as the model that the EU needed to copy. In addition, the e-Justice Portal, according to Costa, will include a list of missing children and direct users to appropriate Hague Convention resources.
http://steelmagnolia-mccannarchives.blogspot.com/2011/01/mccanns-amber-alert-couldve-saved.html
McCanns 'Amber Alert' could have saved Maddie
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/125480
| Madeleine McCann's parents mark a year on hoping to find her alive. |
| LONDON (AFP): The anguished parents of missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann insist they have not given up hope, a year after their lives were shattered when she vanished from their Portugal holiday flat. Far from it: as they prepare for the anniversary this weekend, Gerry and Kate McCann hope to reinvigorate their high-profile campaign to find their daughter alive. "I don't feel as if Madeleine is dead," said her 40-year-old mother, insisting the chances of finding Madeleine alive are "as good now, if not better" than immediately after her disappearance. "I really feel she is out there and we will find her," she added. Madeleine went missing on May 3, days before her fourth birthday as her parents dined with friends in the Portuguese beach resort of Praia da Luz. Her younger brother and sister were in the room too, but they did not wake. Despite a number of reported sightings, Madeleine has never been found, while her parents were made formal suspects in the Portuguese police probe last September, triggering their return to Britain. Much media attention has focused on their suspect status, even if they recently won more than 500,000 pounds (630,000 euros, one million dollars) in compensation from a newspaper that repeatedly alleged they were implicated. This undated photo shows Madeleine McCann who went missing at the Ocean club apartment hotel in Praia de Luz, last year. The anguished parents of missing four-year-old Madeleine insist they have not given up hope, a year after their lives were shattered when she vanished from their Portugal holiday flat. Now, a year, on, they want to refocus on finding their daughter. Gerry McCann, 39, who like his wife is a doctor, said the couple were determined to create something positive from their personal agony by their ongoing campaign to introduce a network to find missing children in Europe. "We knew the night she was taken that some children are murdered and, of course, that was our worst fear," he told Hello magazine, in a joint interview to mark the anniversary. But said his wife: "The chances of her being alive are as good now, if not better, than they were after the first three days of her going missing." Madeleine's uncle, John McCann, told AFP the family were frustrated by a lack of information from Portugal. "The investigation is being run by the Portuguese police and we don't know what they are doing because of their secrecy laws," he said, while voicing hope that at least the couple's suspect status could be lifted. "It's a dreadful thing to have a child abducted and then to be suspected of involvement in it, so to have that cleared up would be a first step," he said. He, and not Madeleine's parents, will visit Praia da Luz for Saturday's anniversary "to thank the Portuguese people for their help." The McCanns are pictured giving an interview with a Spanish television channel at their home in Rothley, in October 2007. The anguished parents of missing four-year-old Madeleine insist they have not given up hope, a year after their lives were shattered when she vanished from their Portugal holiday flat. There will also be church services on the May 3 anniversary in Gerry's home town of Glasgow, in Liverpool and in Rothley, the small town in Leicestershire, central England, where the family live. The campaign to find Madeleine has become a massive media operation, fuelled by huge interest in Britain and abroad. Clarence Mitchell, a former BBC reporter who has become the the family's spokesman, said Madeleine's parents were optimistic about the first anniversary. "Kate and Gerry are buoyant in a sense as they see this as another opportunity to highlight the campaign and their desire for greater change in the wider area (of finding missing children)," he told AFP. "They feel quite resilient and quite strong but of course that is mixed with agony that their daughter hasn't been found. "A little girl is missing, and we need to focus on the search for her, that is our message." But recent events have proved how hard it is to keep the McCanns' carefully managed media campaign on track. On the day they went to Brussels to call for a Europe-wide alert system for abducted children, similar to the Amber Alert programme in the United States, their witness statements to police were leaked from Portugal. The statements gave a detailed account of how they had left Madeleine alone and crying the night before she disappeared. An outraged Mitchell said the leak was an attempt to smear the couple -- a claim immediately rebuffed by Portuguese police, with whom their relations remain tense. |
| Madeleine McCann's parents mark a year on hoping to find her alive. |
