No Weapon Stronger then the Truth

Dr.Goncalo Amaral could take the words Sinatra crooned and use them for his own  'I took the blows, but I did it my way'. Three Portuguese Judges combined with the faith  Dr. Amaral  always had in the judicial system (although at times it seemed to let him down) have stated the investigation was right to make the McCanns arguidos.  

The McCanns now silent. Clarence Mitchell, wonderful to no longer hear his voice , long may the silence reign.

No more the mantra 'There is no evidence Madeleine has come to any serious harm' No more slip ups from Clarence Mitchell 'The McCanns are not responsible for Madeleines death'

ANORAK saying they were right all along. ANORAK,  who are best known for calling Madeleine by the affectionate term, 'Our Maddie'
Maybe they could go one step further and ask the McCanns , where is 'Our Maddie?'

It has been too long and it is time she came home.

As Anorak’s AGW wrote 8 MONTHS AGO:

You know when an accident is going to happen. They even have corporate speak phrases for it these days: “Risk Assessment” is one.

You know when a playing kitten is going to fall from the arm of the chair, you know when the child is going trip and fall, no matter how quick you are to try and get there.

Sometimes you see disasters being created and thundering, in silent-movie slowed down train-wreck style, toward you or others and there’s little you can do other than stand and watch horror-struck by the enormity of it all.

You know the accident’s about to happen and there is nothing you can do but perhaps wonder why you knew?

It has nothing to do with sixth senses, it is because the most powerful computer known to man, your brain, has gathered in all the previous experiences you have weighed in the balance and made a predictive analysis.

That is what is so strange about the current and past behaviour of the parents of the missing child Madeleine McCann.

They have started a court action defending their reputations in Lisbon because the former chief investigating officer Goncalo Amaral, above, is accusing them of being involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. They have also started an action seeking a money settlement for the Portuguese equivalent of libel and in addition are taking on a Lisbon-based documentary production unit for reporting on the detective’s objected to book and the case.

Lisbon was never going to be a perfect spot for the McCann’s to start legal sparring and this week they were dealt what can only be termed a body-blow when the detective’s lawyers produced evidence the UK’s top criminal profiler has said there were “contradictions” in their statements and both should be treated as possible “homicide” suspects.

No arguments, no amount of reshuffling or clarifications can change that and the facts can not be forced back into the can of worms which the McCann parents themselves have allowed to be opened.

          Damage Limitation

The background PR work after the Lisbon shocker has been impressive. The McCann lawyers strode from the courtroom and counter-claimed there were tens, hundreds or more sightings of the missing girl. The UK’s Red Tops dutifully followed the thread and reported the lawyer’s statement. My experience and training gave the brain the predictive text that this looked like a smoke screen, a damage limitation. The missing fact was all these sightings came after the McCann’s themselves had been released from Arguido, suspect, status. The case was archived. It was a cold, leading nowhere, case in the eyes of the top legal and police professionals in Portugal…the responsible authorities have no clues and have suspended work on the case.

It has already been said in these columns, taking on the Portuguese legal system was going to be a minefield but there is one question:

Who is taking the responsibility for the Risk Assessment for this McCann course of action?

Whoever it was needs to be replaced or kept out of the limelight.

Mass public opinion is turning. The McCanns are slipping lower and lower down the celebs’ to be seen with list, certainly no-longer A list and slightly embarrassing to be around according to some whispers.

The McCanns are innocent. No charges have been brought against anyone…except the Chief Investigating Police Officer, Goncalo Amaral.

Wake up!

A second question would have to be: Who on earth took the Risk Assessment decision Amaral was a buffoon an incompetent, bungling, Jacques Clouseau Pink Panther type of police officer?

Come on, wake up! Police officers do not rise through the ranks to positions of authority without being good thief-takers and being very good at spotting the wrongness of something.
Amaral is tougher than the baying section of Britain’s media has portrayed.

The McCanns are becoming battered and worn by this. Just look at their recent photographs. The child is still missing, lost, gone. Arguments still rage over the rightness or wrongness of it all.

Something is judgementally wrong in the Risk Assessments taken here. This week has been hugely damaging to the McCann’s and their cause. The information given this week in the Lisbon court can no longer be ignored or forgotten. It will have a high cost and one of the costs are potential new helpers and donations to the campaign of finding the child. The parents WERE involved in Madeleine’s disappearance because they left her alone to her fate and that is a tragic inescapable fact. No legal action, nor anything else, can change it.

The truly awful fact is this piece been written and illustrated without one mention of the first names, professions or use of photographs of the McCann parents but everyone of you knows the name, the job and carries the image for further risk assessment.
That is a risk position NOT to be in.

Pictures Of All The Madeleine McCann Suspects

You can now buy the book in Portugal, and read Amaral’s opinion that Our Maddie died in an accident at the McCanns’ holiday home in Praia da Luz in 2007. Amaral, who worked on the investigation, also alleges Gerry and Kate faked her abduction.

Maddie: The truth of the Lie: Book review

A book review on Dr.Amarals book from two years ago.
Written by Blogger.. Funride . Portugal.
Also includes updates on the lifting of the ban. (Scroll to bottom of article)


I have some difficulties remembering the last time I read a book from top to bottom without interruptions. This book was written by one of the former Portuguese judicial police inspectors (Gonçalo Amaral) responsible for the investigation of Madeleine McCann´s missing that happened more than two years ago (03 May 2007) while in vacation with her parents in Algarve, Portugal.

Frankly I must admit I felt something was wrong with the investigations when no one suspected of any other scenario but the kidnapping after knowing that a group of parents  use to dine in a restaurant leaving all their children alone sleeping in their apartments.

If one tried to put himself in all those parents` position it is easy to realize that if some accident had occurred during the time they were at the restaurant they all would immediately feel guilty of what happened and I believe it is possible to conceive they could all try to minimize the damage doing everything to make it look like a kidnapping. Of course this is all hypotheses and does not prove anything by it self.

Watch the impressive documentry about this case near the end of this page just above the comment box.

Maddie - A Verdade da Mentira - The True of Lie

Read more.....

http://hubpages.com/hub/Madeleine-McCann---Lies-True---Book-review

Etan Patz and Madeleine McCann

The McCanns and their thirst to connect and use any child to make it appear like their alleged abduction. The two cases could not be further apart. But hey do'nt let that stop them.

22 years later: A judge declares Etan Patz dead in June of 2001 at the request of his parents who want to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against Jose Antonio Ramos, the man they believe killed their child. Ramos is currently in jail for child molestation and has allegedly confessed to other inmates that he killed Patz.

Etan Patz around the time of his abduction.

 -- Etan Patz and Madeleine McCann --

Etan Patz was 6 years old on March 25, 1979, when he got dressed for school and bounded out the door to walk two blocks to his school bus stop in lower Manhattan. It was the first time that his mother was allowing him to make the walk all by himself.

My own son, 7, is constantly asking me to let him do this. *Shudder*

Patz never made it to school. Never made it on the bus. When he failed to come home later in the day, his parents alerted police and a massive search ensued, lasting for weeks. Patz's disappearance generated a media circus in New York and is credited with launching the missing children movement. His was the first picture to appear on the milk carton campaign.

The main suspect was and still is Jose Antonio Ramos, a friend of Patz's one-time babysitter. Ramos, a convicted child molester, admitted to the boy's murder while serving time for an unrelated case of abusing boys in a correctional facility. But without a body or direct link, the district attorney said he could not officially charge him for the crime.

Patz's parents, Stanley and Julie, launched a civil case against Ramos for wrongful death and won $2 million, which they never collected because Ramos is still serving time. He's due to get out of jail in two years.
Just two days ago, the new Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance agreed to reopen the case, making good on a campaign promise to try to bring suspect Jose Antonio Ramos to justice.


Madeleine McCann

And across the ocean in England, Gerry and Kate McCann got news   that a new witness has come forward in the case of their daughter Madeleine, a case that captured worldwide attention. Gerry and Kate left their daughter, on the verge of her 4th birthday, asleep alone in a rental apartment at a Portugal resort, along with their younger twins, while they ate dinner in a nearby restaurant with friends. They went back to check on the kids every half hour, but during one check, they discovered Maddie was gone.

Several people reported sightings around the resort and throughout Europe, where private investigators continue to scour three years later for possible connections to child sex trade groups, but there were never any concrete leads or even a major suspect in the case.

Just the other day, Carlos Moreira, 65, told detectives that on the morning of May 4, 2007, he saw a blond girl sitting in the back of a truck, wearing pajamas similar to those worn by Madeleine the night before.

Moreira waited three years to tell the McCann family's private investigation team because, he says, he thought police had mounted road blocks in the area. He told police that when the van door was opened, the little girl did not wake up, as if she was drugged. He described her as blond and about 4 years old.

This might not be enough for police to reopen the case, but the McCanns continue to cling to their private investigation. Meantime, they're trying to move on, if that's even possible.

"You just hope that ... she is now not at harm and she's getting love and happiness," Kate has said. "That's all I can hope for."

My son and Maddy are just days apart in age. She would be 7 right now. If she were here, she, too, might have been asking her mother if she could walk to the school bus stop alone.

The Love of a Child

There is no greater love than to have your child love you. To wake and see your childs eyes full of trust, look at you and smile. Your child will love you forever, even after your death. A childs love is yours, everlasting.

Your child is your future , your present and your past. Your child is forever in your heart, like a constant heartbeat, she will never go away.

Madeleine Beth had this love for her mother. Whatever happened that dreadful night Madeleine would have died loving her mother , but Kate was only looking for a way out, Madeleines love soon forgotten.

Mothers who Love their Children

Young beautiful mothers who love their lives and love their children. Beautiful parents, do harm their children, even kill them.

Both of these mothers know the true fate of Madeleine McCann. One knows because she is married to the Police Officer who worked on the case. And the other mother knows , because she was there.  The truth is hard to bear, even more so when you know someone who knows your inner secrets. So what do you do , you try and destroy the person who knows your secret, your truth.

 Kate tried to destroy Sofia and everything she holds dear to her, because Sofia  is a mother who fights for her children. Kate only fights for herself and she will never win over Sofia. Sofia , is from a different culture, a culture Kate will never understand, it is a culture where a mother will die for her child. Kate cannot begin to know what this means.

 It is a culture where belief that a mother should never have to bury her child, and if she does, she screams long  into the night , for her pain is too much to bear and she believes she can no longer go on . And as she screams, she screams one word to the God she so deeply believes in. Why?

Bad Mummy

Dr.Nicola Goc writes a very sympathetic article around Kate McCann and compares her to Lindy Chamberlain. Lindy was, and maybe still is a strong supporter of Kates. But Lindy nor Dr.Goc know Kate McCann or what became of Madeleine.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/Evil/Evil%209/goc%20paper.pdf

The Blacksmith Bureau

Usually an ass but not always

The judges begin by describing  the three main grounds for the appeal: the claim for freedom of expression under the Portuguese constitution [which has been described elsewhere since the verdict JB]; the second claim that the facts in the book were "mere reproductions” of the investigative data and the third, that those same facts were “even part of the Prosecutor’s report.”

All three claims are accepted at the end of the judgement.
They summarise Amaral’s theory, with no weasel words and nothing  for the McCanns to pick out and spin: in the book, they say, Amaral defends the theory that the child died in the apartment on May 3, that an abduction was simulated, that the parents are suspected of concealing the body and that there was child neglect.

They then turn to the individual himself, someone  that the legal system has until now shown every sign of treating as a non-person: Amaral. The judges  remind us of his reasons for writing the book and quote: “Later on, I was removed from the investigation. I then decided that it was time for me to defend myself in a public way. Therefore, I immediately requested my retirement, so I could regain the plenitude of my freedom of expression.”

The judges add that it is “important” that the author feels he is the victim of injustice and wants the truth, or at least his version of the truth, to come out, especially since he felt his honour was in question and he was not allowed to reply in his own defence. With considerable understatement they add that this is not a minor point.

In the book, they say, Amaral presents a multiplicity of facts from the investigation, all of which are in the DVD and which are evaluated in the Prosecutors’ report. In this multiplicity of facts some are primary, some secondary: Amaral evaluates and weighs them accordingly, from the standpoint of someone with 26 years experience of police investigation.

Amaral, say the judges,  describes in the book, in detail, a number of apparent  facts and situations that from the outset of the investigation were not compatible with each other leading to contradictory   conclusions.

They confirm that these reservations were not in opposition to the Prosecutors’ report but were essentially the same as those  given by Humpty himself – by immediately  turning to and quoting from his report: “From the analysis of the depositions that were made, [runs the report] it became evident that important details existed which were not fully understood and integrated, which needed to be tested and verified at the location of events, thus rendering it possible to establish the apparent failures to agree and the lack of consistency in a suitable investigative form: the reconstruction. This could not be carried out, despite the commitment that was displayed by the Public Ministry and by the PJ, …” [my translation JB]

The judges then turn to the dogs, quoting not from the Truth of the Lie but, once again, from the Prosecutors’ report. The findings of Eddie and Keela are given in some detail.

Having done so the judges add  that the combination of the inconsistencies  and the performance of the dogs was enough to constitute making them arguidos [there is no mention of “haste”JB]. As far as the dogs are concerned they state that forensic evidence, as we know, did not corroborate their findings; as far as the contradictions are concerned the Portuguese authorities, Justice ministry and PJ tried to perform a reconstruction but failed due to the lack of availability of the McCanns and their friends, leaving those contradictions still unresolved.

Here, once again, they quote not the Truth of the Lie but the Prosecutors’ report, [you know, that document that clears them] in support of what Amaral  claims:

 “(…) despite the fact that the national authorities took all measures to render their travelling to Portugal possible, due to motives that are unknown, after the many doubts that they raised concerning the need and the opportunity of their travelling were clarified several times, they chose not to show up, which rendered the diligence impossible to perform.


We believe that the main damaged party were the McCann arguidos, who missed the possibility to prove what they have protested since they were made arguidos: their innocence towards the fateful event; the investigation was also hindered, because said facts remain unclear (…)”.

Now, the killer blow and here we will quote the judges in full:

“What is certain [our italics JB] is that since the start of the investigation, there were incongruent and even contradictory situations concerning the witness statements, the telephone records of calls that were made and received on mobile phones that belonged to the couple and to the group of friends that were on holidays with them, the movements of people immediately after the disappearance of the little girl was noticed, concerning the state in which the bedroom from where the child disappeared from was found (closed window? open window? partially open window?), etc., and the mystery would only become even thicker due to the clues that were left by the aforementioned sniffer dogs.”
Note the phrase: “what is certain”.

Killer blow number 2:

“Where Amaral differs from the Prosecutors who wrote the dispatch, is in the logical, police-work-related and investigative interpretation that he [Amaral] makes of those facts.”

And number 3:

We need, the judges say, to stress the following: the facts that led to the applicants’ constitution as arguidos within the inquiry were later on not sufficiently valued by the Public Ministry’s Prosecutors to lead to a criminal accusation, but those very same facts, seen from a different angle, may lead to a different conclusion from that of the prosecutors.

Suggestive data (“indications”) that were deemed to be insufficient in terms of evidence in a criminal investigation, can be appreciated in a different way, in an interpretation that can legitimately be published as a book, as long as the interpretation does not offend any fundamental rights of anyone involved. In our view that said interpretation does not offend the applicants’ rights.”

Costs were awarded against  the McCanns
.
The full implications of the judgement are going to take time for all parties  to evaluate fully. But  the claim that the Prosecutors’ report  was a finding  of either guilt or innocence is dead: it is an interpretation of the evidence of no more validity than that of Goncalo Amaral, perhaps – given, as the judges say, the experience and ability of the inspector – even  less.

The verdict makes it quite clear that the burden of legal suspicion has not been lifted from the McCanns by the archiving report. And, by quoting the report in its relevant passages, the judges also show  that the failure of the Tapas Nine to co-operate in clarifying the events of May 3 was, and remains,  central to the investigation.

The TM lawyers – who have to be paid - will no doubt be studying the judgement – whose translators had to be paid - very carefully, in liaison with Shrieker Duarte, who has to be paid. Where will the Dirty Pair go on getting the money? In the UK last week the famous Liverpool football club court case which involved virtually no preparatory work and ran for a mere few days had costs awarded against the losing party of around one hundred thousand pounds per day. Goncalo Amaral, God preserve him, has already faced the problems of trying to defend himself without any available funds: it may well be the McCanns’ turn next.

http://blacksmithbureau.blogspot.com/2010/10/usually-ass-but-not-always.html