Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

I am curious why you accuse the Portuguese police of bungling their investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Having read extensively about this case it appears that the investigation was closed down very quickly after the Portuguese pointed the finger at the McCanns. Since in a majority of cases where a child goes missing the parents or relatives are in fact responsible, why did the Portuguese bungle the case because they did exactly what any other police force would do, which is focus on the parents.  There was no evidence of an abduction.

I think that the case of Madeleine McCann cannot possibly be grouped with the other instances in your report.  This child is a British Citizen.  She has been missing for four years.  Neither the Portuguese or the British establishment have done anything to rectify the bungling of the Portuguese police on 3 May 2007 and beyond.  But whatever anyone may think about the parents surely Madeleine deserves better treatment.  I say thank goodness David Cameron has had the ….. to do something that no other politician has dared to do, and that is to order a full review by the Metropolitan police.  As far as the cost is concerned, I would far prefer my money to go towards finding Madeleine rather than all the billions supplied to Foreign Aid, and to the trade union officials who live in council houses and are paid £120,000 per year. 

 Whatever happened to ‘science-based, evidence-led policy’?

 Incidentally, it seems we have just committed £3Bn to the Trident renewal programme

 And I support your right to direct your monies to the failed parents McCann, as long as none of mine goes to them! You clearly have no idea of the case – these unpleasant people have fooled some of the people for a while now – but they didn’t fool the portuguese police – even though they did pervert the course of justice and used political connections to crush the investigation.

I suggest you refrain from commenting until you have read the case files and examined the inconsistencies of the pairs stories and the downright lies they and their friends have told.

 Ian Larman -  I suggest you refrain from commenting until you have read the case files and examined the inconsistencies of the pairs stories and the downright lies they and their friends have told.
 
How do you come to this conclusion?  By believing the Keystone Kops I presume.  They wanted to take the easy way out to protect their tourist industry by trying to pin the disappearance of Madeleine on her parents from approximately the second day of her abduction.  Yes, the British police were involved to a degree, but only at the direction of the Portuguese.  They were led down the garden path just as you have been. But fortunately now the truth may out, and people like you will have to eat your words.  As I have said many many times before, if I had committed such a heinous crime and been allowed to leave the resort, as soon as I arrived home I would have kept quiet, got on with my life, and breathed a sigh of relief that I had got away with the murder/cover up of my daughters disappearance.  I would not be advertising the fact that she was still missing after four years, and pleading with my Government to reopen the case.  Only an idiot would do that, and Kate and Gerry McCann are worlds away from that.  I suggest that perhaps you should NOT believe everything that you read, especially stories concocted by a crooked cop.

I wrote to David Cameron regarding his intervention in the McCann’s case.  Whilst I appreciate that my letter may not ever see the light of day I pointed out that there are many anomolies in the McCann’s case; one is the evidence of the ‘dogs’  another the sighting of the Smiths – overlooked – why?
For a balanced view I read ‘The Truth of the Lie’ on-line, I suggest others in search of the truth do the same.

Hi Poppy – Your comment about the ‘dogs’ – have you actually seen the video of Grimes and the dog in the car park – the dog is running around like a bat out of hell, it shows more interest in a brick wall than it does to the McCanns hire car – then when it seems that he is not going to find anything Grimes entices the dog to the car, he sniffs around of a while before deciding to bark.  This in my view is not conclusive evidence of any dead bodies anywhere around the car.  As far as the blood in the apartment is concerned, a week or so before the McCanns arrived in Praia da Luz a man staying in the same apartment cut himself quite badly shaving, the cut didn’t stop bleeding for approximately one hour, and during that time he was walking around the apartment.  
Also, Mr Smith was the only one who said that the man carrying the child may have looked like Gerry, and he only came to that conclusion when he saw Gerry carrying Sean down the steps of the plane when they arrived home.  That again is not enough to warrant any credible evidence. 
As far as ‘The Truth of the Lie’ is concerned – Amaral, the author, is convicted of purjury with an 18 month suspended sentence - in another case very very similar to Madeleine, where the little girl’s mother has been convicted of killing her child and is serving 16 years in prison, although there was no evidence or body to support the fact.  He covered up the fact that two of his officers beat-up the mother, and after that she very mysteriously confessed (that sounds to me as though it was under duress??).  The Truth of the Lie is a fairy story.

Life is a journey of experience we all have to take. Along that journey we must all make mistakes; without mistakes there can be no experience to value, learn from and pass on. Everybody knows, or should know, the wise saying, ‘To err is human, to forgive is divine’; words that express that we must all be prepared to forgive mistakes  because we all make them, we all learn from them and that is what makes us human.
Life presents each of us, as individuals, with our own trials and challenges to overcome and turn into positives, which allow us to continue our individual journeys. We can also learn from the experience of others and when we see positive results from somebody else’s experience, we will benefit from learning how mistakes were turned into that positive. This can have a profound value for us and, indeed, society itself.
Kate and Gerry McCann and their family have found their journey took them on a path none of us would wish upon anybody.  Finding a member of the family suddenly missing, a beloved daughter, Madeleine, a child whose fate is still unknown.
I have bought and read Kate’s book, Madeleine. I thank Kate with all my heart for sharing this insight into a family dealing with the tragedy of missing a loved one, taken away without trace. The book shares their hopes and fears, the happy memories and nightmares, the feeling of being helpless and the dogged determination to never, ever, give up working to find Madeleine. The challenge of relying on a police force with language and culture barriers, of being arguido’s to being exonerated from suspicion and then realising the case to find Madeleine had gone cold as far as law enforcement is concerned. Then there are the ramifications of relying upon the media to help publicise the missing child. The need these days for good PR when courting the media and experiencing how the media can be a foe as well as friend.  The high publicity invited the good, the mad and the bad via the 21st century equivalent of the gossipers, Chinese whisperers, conspiracy theorists and perfect people who never make mistakes from the Internet, probably because their virtual selves are exonerated from having feelings of a human nature. Yet Kate and Gerry have learned to get past the negatives and have achieved success, breaking new ground at every step that positively and practically benefits all missing children and adults.
What have I learned from the book?  Kate and Gerry made the same mistake thousands upon thousands of people have made through generations, being lulled into a false sense of security on holiday. Yet how many of us have taken safety  for granted of the baby listening services and drop in nanny services until the McCanns, providing that level of care, were taken advantage of by an abductor? Madeleine’s disappearance has been a wakeup call for everyone to learn from, including legitimate and legal holiday child care businesses.
I have also learned how much the love for a missing child can move mountains.  Kate and Gerry have certainly moved mountains; from a mistake to giving Madeleine the biggest hope of being found alive and returned home despite the negatives they must conquer on their journey. The campaign to publicise Madeleine, the wonderful and kind people who volunteer their support and practical help, the determination of HTFM – the Helping to Find Madeleine awareness campaign group – the generosity of the public, all met with hard work, strong love and successful campaigning by the family themselves. The book records the plight of all missing children through Madeleine:  the mistakes, the experience, the tough and tragic road travelled by the family and the best route to find the path where Madeleine has been taken along, on her uninvited journey, to meet once again in the future.
I recommend that everyone go out and buy this book, share the McCann family journey, for the sake of shaping our own journey, becoming more positive about the plight of missing children and help structure the solution to their plight. Thank you, Kate, for sharing your journey, which is a record of your love and fighting determination for your daughter, Madeleine, and for all your family.

‘Kate and Gerry McCann are exceptionally caring parents’…….I cannot beleive that you have made that statement without a big grin on your face!

I do have children, they have survived being toodlers because we never used them as babysitters!

These ‘parents’ didnt make a mistake, they are supposed to be Doctors – people who can make decisions about other members of society which can impact very seriously on their lives, yet they left their childen EVERY NIGHT (or so they claim!).

I assume you are a friend or relative of the despicable pair? I can think of no otehr reason for your defending people who set up a fund on the back of a missing child, to pay their mortgage and to pay lawyers to defend against a law which is intended to potect children.

At the very least they should drop the lawyers, admit the error of their ways and answer the many questions which remain unanswered and could really help find the child.

I say again, you clearly have no idea of the details of the case – or have not considered them.

Idiot.

Your children survived being TOODLERS did they?  What sort of children do you have? And why should you use toodlers as babysitters? 

Kate and Gerry McCann made a grave error.  They DID NOT leave their children EVERY NIGHT.  They DID NOT set up a fund on the back of a missing child – people voluntarily gave them excessive amounts of money to help find Madeleine, so they had to do something with it, so they set up a fund, which is straight and above board.  You would have been the first to complain if they had put it into their own bank account.  They issue accounts every year for you, and the rest of the public to see.  The fund paid their mortgage for two months whilst Gerry was not able to continue with his employment, which the majority of people, such as myself did not begrudge them doing. 

I can’t understand your statement “and to pay lawyers to defend against a law which is intended to protect children”.  Which law is that – maybe the law of Goncalo Amaral?  The police office who was supposed to be in charge of the case, and only met them once – in court when they sued him for writing his book of lies.  As far as the infamouse questions are concerned, once again, I reiterate – look at the questions Kate was asked and tell me what use any of them where to help find Madeleine? 

No, Mr Larman – I do have every detail of the case – and unlike you, I stand by the evidence that there is no evidence whatsoever that Kate and Gerry McCann had anything to do with the abduction, or disappearance, or murder of their child, and I feel nothing but pity for such an uncaring specimen of humanity as you.

This is a comment made by yet another member of the public who clearly believes that Kate and Gerry McCann love and care for all of their children, especially after reading Kate’s book.   I think the word ‘idiot’ is an apt description of you!!

Just noticed this, idiot.

Oh dear! There is actually no evidence whatsoever of abduction, yet you seem quite happy with that! 

There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that Kate and Gerry were  not caring parents. You have revealed your nature in attacking the messenger rather than properly and objectively focussing on the evidence – or lack of it.  

They might be innocent of some things that they have been accused of (but have not effectively rebutted) but they are certainly undeniably guilty of neglect, as they had a duty of care and clearly failed in that duty and there can be now no doubt that the child suffered harm as a result. 

Sorry my reply was delayed, but this issue is not going to go away.

Wow!! You certainly are quick off the mark – not – rather like the response of the Portuguese police on 3 May 2007!!   I hope you have been watching and reading the reports in the Leaman enquiry where the newspaper editors have been drawn over the coals for telling lie after lie about the McCanns, with absolutely no proof of any statements they made in their newspapers?  I do not dispute the fact that the McCanns should not have left their children as they did, but millions of others do the same, and will still, even after the abduction of Madeleine.  I would be interested to hear what you think actually happened to her, been as you are so sure she was not abducted?  Perhaps your theory could then be passed on to the Metropolitan Police to investigate. 

Sorry – that should read Leveson inquiry.

Still left the kids alone at night….

*Lies, beatings, secret trials: the dark side of police handling Madeleine case*

By DAVID ROSE

Last updated at 18:57 16 September 2007

According to his friends, Chief Inspector Goncalo Amaral of the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria, co-leader of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from the Mark Warner Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, is a dedicated and capable detective, determined to do whatever it takes to find her ? or those responsible for murdering her.

As a foreign reporter in Portugal, it is difficult to form a view. Thanks to the country’s stringent judicial secrecy laws, Amaral is officially forbidden from talking to the media.

I confronted the sweaty, corpulent figure in an ill-fitting jacket twice last Friday: the first time at 10am, as he sat slurping coffee and cakes at the Kalahary cafe in Portimao with his colleague, Chief Inspector Guillermino Encarnacao; the second just before 3pm, when the two men made their way from a restaurant to a waiting black Mercedes, in which they were
driven 400 yards to meet officials at the courthouse.

The reaction was the same both times: “No speak! No speak!” was all Amaral
would say, making a swatting motion as though batting away an insect.

But Amaral’s official silence is not the only difference between him and
his counterparts in Britain.

In the UK, it is unlikely he would be leading the McCann inquiry at all.

Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry may never be charged with anything,
despite their present status as arguidos, or official suspects, and by the
end of last week, apparently well-placed sources were admitting that any
case against them is circumstantial and weak.

Amaral, however, is in a similar position. He, too, is an arguido, facing
possible trial on a serious criminal charge arising from a murder case
brought to court in 2004, the last occasion a little girl vanished in the
Algarve.

The Mail on Sunday can today reveal new details of this case, the subject
of a draconian judicial order that has stopped most sources who know about
the case from talking to the Portuguese Press.

According to the order, documents about the case have been restricted to a
handful of officials, while the next stage of the process ? a hearing at
which Amaral and four fellow officers may be asked formal questions ? will
be conducted in secret.

It is believed that this is set for next month.

Three of Amaral’s senior PJ colleagues have been made suspects for the
torture of the missing girl’s mother, Leonor Cipriano, who has been
convicted of killing her daughter Joana, aged eight, and jailed for 16
years.

As for Amaral, the claim against him is “omisado de denuncia” ? that he
tried to hide the evidence of the alleged torture or, in other words,
attempted a cover-up. He is said to deny it strenuously.

In internet blogs and newspaper columns, Amaral’s supporters have claimed
that the Cipriano case is built on lies ? a vicious smear against a decent
detective trying to do his job.

It has, they say, “no connection” to the Madeleine McCann inquiry.

Experienced lawyers in Portimao, the town 12 miles from Praia da Luz where
Amaral is PJ chief, disagree.

The case against the detectives began as a complaint lodged by Cipriano’s
lawyer, they pointed out, but has now been adopted by the public prosecutor.

“In order to bring formal charges, the public prosecutor has to believe
there is a strong case,” said Oliveira Trindad, who has practised law in
the area for more than ten years.

“That means that after assessing all the evidence, he thinks that if the
case goes to trial, a conviction is more likely than not.”

That decision is likely to be made well before the McCann case is closed.

There are, to be sure, many differences between Leonor Cipriano and Kate
McCann.

But there are also similarities, starting with the fact that although the
bodies of their daughters have not been found, Amaral and his PJ colleagues
have long been convinced that both girls are dead.

No one would suggest that in the course of the marathon interrogations that
preceded their departure from Portugal last weekend, Kate or Gerry McCann
were the victims of physical violence.

But at times it seemed they were also being subjected to torment, albeit of
a different, psychological kind.

It, too, say Portimao’s criminal defence lawyers, may have been inspired by
PJ officers desperate to achieve the end they sought with Cipriano ? a
confession.

It isn’t hard to locate the source of some of the McCanns’ current
difficulties: Hugo Beaty’s bar.

There, amid the burnt orange concrete of the Estrela apartment complex, a
five-minute walk from the Ocean Club, most of the seats along the shady
terrace and more inside will be taken all day by reporters with laptops,
authors of a daily verbal torrent that has come to seem unstoppable.

After Kate and Gerry’s abrupt return to Leicestershire last Sunday, almost
nothing happened in the McCann case last week.

The only verified fact is that after considering a ten-volume PJ dossier
about Madeleine’s disappearance on May 3, Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias, a
junior judge in Portimao, decided to grant certain requests made by the
prosecutor, Joao Cunha de Magalhaes.

Every news outlet covering the story ? a waterfront that now extends across
the whole of Europe to the major American TV networks and even,
unbelievably, a paper in war-torn Somalia ? has stated that these requests
were for warrants to seize items including Kate McCann’s private diary,
Gerry’s computer and (though this seems slightly less certain) Madeleine’s
beloved cuddle cat.

There is, however, nothing approaching official confirmation of these
claims.

Like everything else about the case, the details of the prosecutor’s
approach to the judge are covered, supposedly, by the judicial secrecy
laws, under which the penalty ? in theory ? for making unauthorised
disclosures is two years in prison.

Thus it is that like almost everything else being broadcast and published
beyond Portugal’s borders about the hunt for Madeleine, the claim that the
police want to read Kate’s diary has reached its audience via Hugo Beaty’s
bar.

Every day there starts the same way shortly after it opens at 9am, with an
informal briefing to the foreign Press by a locally resident British woman
who normally makes a meagre living acting as an occasional interpreter ?
for the Policia Judiciaria.

Every morning, the woman ? who asked me not to publish her name ? goes
through the Portuguese tabloids and translates their ever-more febrile
articles.

Every afternoon, the foreigners ? almost none of whom can speak more than
the most basic Portuguese, nor claim a single, genuine source inside the
police investigation ? recycle the tales for consumers abroad.

By the end of last week, some of the assertions made by the Portuguese had
become part of a settled consensus.

For example, it was reported from Berlin to Baltimore that the police had
already made a photocopy of Kate’s diary ? which, if true, would mean they
had broken the law ? and merely wanted to obtain the judge’s approval to
use it as evidence.

The reason they are so keen on it, it was alleged, is that it suggests she
found her children “hyperactive” and difficult to handle, while railing at
her husband’s allegedly dilatory, hands-off approach.

The claims about the diary’s contents were first published on Thursday by
Jose Manuel Ribeiro, crime correspondent for the Lisbon daily Diario de
Noticias.

By chance I ran into him that same afternoon, outside the apartment where
Madeleine disappeared.

I congratulated him on his scoop, but he shook his head, disconsolate.
Already, he complained, it was turning to dust.

Ribeiro said he had been given the story by an impeccable inside source,
but already officials in Lisbon were denying it, and the source himself
could no longer assure him it was true.

“Why is bad information getting out to the public?” he asked. “Because
we’re being given it.”

Somehow, however, the denials that had made Ribeiro so angry did not get
through to the foreigners.

If the questionable leak had been planted for a purpose ? to increase the
pressure on the hapless McCanns ? it may well have succeeded.

And, in the foreign public’s mind, the germinating notion that Kate might
have killed her daughter because she could not handle her had been nurtured
by a further dollop of manure.

A similar, apparently sanctioned but inaccurate leak had already gone
around the world to still more devastating effect.

Early on Monday evening, TV channels began to report that British forensic
scientists had made a “100 per cent” DNA match to Madeleine from
“biological material” ? said to be hair and “bodily fluids” ? recovered
from the Renault Scenic that the McCanns did not hire until 25 days after
she vanished, suggesting that they had hidden her body on May 3 and moved
it weeks after her death.

With no time for reporters to make checks before their deadlines, the story
spread like foot and mouth to almost every British front page the next
morning.

It was only in the ensuing days that it began, spectacularly, to unravel.

The match was not 100 per cent after all, it transpired, but 80 per cent or
less ? a level that, according to Professor Alec Jeffries, DNA matching’s
inventor, might mean that the material had not come from Madeleine at all,
but another member of her family.

Even if it had, other experts said, it would prove very little.

Among readers who followed the forensic details, the case against the
McCanns had been seen to suffer damage.

But others were left with a clear impression ? that the PJ now believed
they had real evidence that the McCanns must have been responsible for
Madeleine’s (still unconfirmed) death.

As for those who still harboured doubts, more rococo “revelations” were
being published widely by the end of the week, such as the claim that
having bundled Madeleine’s body into the car, the McCanns drove it to the
marina in nearby Lagos.

There they are said to have hired a boat, swore its owner into their
conspiracy, then sailed into the Atlantic, into which they tipped their
child, weighted down with rocks.

Could such stories really be part of a conscious PJ strategy? Some lawyers
around the Portimao courthouse believe that they could.

“Portuguese journalists aren’t just making this stuff up,” said Oliveira
Trindad.

“They are getting it from the police, of course, and the justice officers,
the people working for the prosecutors. It’s obvious that some information
is coming from the PJ.”

Some of it, he added, appears to be accurate ? so making it that much
easier for the same sources to seed disinformation.

Another Portimao lawyer, who asked not to be named, claimed the PJ was
fighting a “propaganda war” with the McCanns.

“It is the fault of the British Press,” he said.

“They were the ones who started saying, ‘You’re no good, you’re no good.’

“If you say a lie like that many times, so many people believe it. You
cannot blame the PJ for wanting to hit back.”

But there might be another reason.

“Some people think journalists pay their PJ sources,” the second lawyer
said, citing a case where an officer from Lisbon is facing criminal charges
after being caught red-handed copying secret documents about a fraud case,
allegedly for private profit.

“But they also have an interest in the case and its coverage.”

With the forensic evidence apparently confused and contradictory, “it seems
the main goal of the PJ now is to get a confession. It’s like in the films,
‘Aha, we have a confession, let’s take them to court.’

“It’s normal to want a confession when they don’t have much else.”

Intense interrogation of the McCanns has so far failed. But perhaps, the
lawyer implied, using the media might be another way of applying the third
degree.

“I want to believe that the Portuguese police do everything the right way,”
said Joao Grade, the lawyer for Leonor Cipriano.

“But sometimes, if they really think someone is guilty, as they did with
Leonor, they may find other ways to get what they want. It’s only human.

“When they believe someone has killed a child, it’s normal that they will
apply pressure.

“In the McCann case, it seems that the police have what they consider
half-proofs.

“But it’s not airtight, it doesn’t interlock, so maybe they need more.”

As he spoke, I found myself recalling British miscarriages of justice:
cases such as the Birmingham Six, wrongly convicted of IRA pub bombings
that killed 21, where the police, under tremendous pressure to “get a
result”, built dishonest but convincing prosecutions based around
confessions.

Could the same thing be happening to the McCanns? The pressure on the
police is certainly intense.

The loss of a child evokes horror everywhere. On the Algarve, however, the
need to solve the case ? and, perhaps, not to leave the fear that Madeleine
was killed or abducted by an unknown paedophile ? has other roots as well.

“The Algarve is a family destination, and situations like this are not
agreeable to anyone,” said Elderico Viegas, the regional tourism authority
president.

“Our reputation for safety is one of our most important values ? especially
with the British, who make up our biggest market.”

And Algarve tourism, worth about £2.8billion a year and growing rapidly,
is, Viegas said, the single biggest component of the entire Portuguese
economy.

The police had, he added, mishandled the media, giving rise to damaging
speculation.

“But for me, the details are not important. What’s important is the
economy. I was born and brought up here and I can’t remember the last time
a tourist was murdered.” So far, he added, visitor numbers this year are up.

Central to many British miscarriages of justice was a shared, deeply
ingrained belief among police and prosecutors that their suspects “had” to
be guilty.

With the Birmingham Six, it was founded on botched forensic tests that
“told” investigators that the men had been handling the explosive
nitroglycerine ? false positives that arose because they had been playing
with cards coated in the harmless chemical nitrocellulose.

In Praia da Luz, there are signs of a similar mindset at work, derived from
equally tendentious “evidence”.

For example, said a local source who knows several of the PJ inquiry team,
from an early stage detectives laid great weight on Kate McCann’s apparent
composure when she appeared in public.

One of the strangest aspects of Portuguese coverage of the case has been
frequent recourse to media psychologists, who have made all manner of
deductions about her personality and state of mind by “analysing” her TV
image, claiming that the absence of tears and presence of carefully applied
make-up indicates a “cold”, “manipulative” or even “psychopathic”
personality.

In other words, someone capable of reacting instantly to the death of her
daughter, whether deliberate or accidental, by deciding that she had to
hide the body and conceal what had happened, and able to persuade her
husband and perhaps other “accomplices” to go along with her plot.

Disturbingly, said the local source, such analysis has not been confined to
the media.

“Pretty early on, they had forensic psychologists in, studying hours of
video footage, drawing extremely unfavourable conclusions about Kate’s
personality,” she said.

“You could say she’s been damned by her stiff upper lip.”

There have been reported claims that Kate McCann had “confessed” to killing
Madeleine to a local Catholic priest.

But the Rev Hubbard Haynes, the Anglican vicar who lives in Praia da Luz
and got closer to the McCanns than anyone during their months in Portugal,
refuted them with controlled fury.

A young, passionate Canadian, who took up his post a week after Madeleine’s
disappearance, he said: “When I mention Maddie, Gerry and Kate in my own
prayers, I find myself weeping.

“I have gone out into the fields and looked in the hedgerows, begging God
for some sign that will help us find her, and I have wept because He has
not given it to us yet.

“All I can say is that my tears are as nothing to the tears I have seen
shed by Kate and Gerry.

“They may not have cried for the cameras, but to say they do not weep in
private is facile and offensive.

“The man and woman I have known for the past four months are a couple whose
lives have become unbearably empty because their little girl was missing.

“I do not recognise those people in recent media reports, and I find the
idea that they had anything to do with her disappearance just inconceivable.

“There is great evil in this world, and someone has taken this child.”

Other aspects of the emerging mindset against the McCanns seemed equally
questionable.

Several Portuguese lawyers and journalists, along with a uniformed police
officer from the National Republican Guard I spoke to outside the Ocean
Club apartment, told me solemnly not only that the McCanns and their
friends were “swingers” who had taken their holiday together to indulge in
group sex (an assertion made repeatedly by the Portuguese Press), but that
“everyone knows” that its tolerance of orgies is the Mark Warner Ocean Club
resort’s main selling point.

One afternoon I decided to test this proposition, approaching two holiday
reps there, dressed in their red Mark Warner sweatshirts. “Er, is this a
good place for swingers, then?” I asked.

They looked at me in total bafflement. “Swingers?” one replied.

“Look around you, sir. Most of our guests are retired, or families with
children.”

Another assertion published several times last week is that, on the night
that Madeleine disappeared, the McCanns phoned Sky TV before contacting the
police ? another claim echoed by the uniformed cop.

Outside the Portimao courthouse, I asked Sky’s reporter Ashish Joshi if he
thought this might be true.

He rolled his eyes wearily. “It’s just nonsense,” he said.

“The first anyone at Sky knew about Maddy was when the story appeared on
the Press Association wire.

“I was asked about this just yesterday by a Portuguese reporter. I told him
it was crap. And this morning, his paper printed it.”

I passed this on to the Republican Guard officer, but he was unmoved.

His unit, he said, had handled the case in its early stages, and from the
start he and his colleagues had been convinced there was something fishy
about the McCanns.

“My partner was there on the night of May 3,” he said, “and I can tell you,
that apartment was full of people, Kate was screaming ? and yet her twins
didn’t wake up.

“How do you explain that? They must have been drugged. Nobody on the force
believed their story about a kidnap for a moment.

“That little girl is dead, for sure. Soon you will see the truth.”

Why the need for such bizarre allegations? The answer, I believe, is that
there is a massive hole at the heart of the emerging PJ theory.

When Madeleine disappeared the McCanns did not have a car.

The Ocean Club is in the middle of a busy resort, and the notion that
somehow the McCanns found a way to conceal her without transport, and then
went to dinner with their friends as if nothing were amiss is beyond
credibility.

One Portuguese journalist suggested to me that they might have hidden her
on a scrubby headland a few minutes’ walk away.

But as I found when I attempted to go for a run there, at night it is
inhabited by feral dogs, whose barking would have made the digging of some
putative shallow grave impossible.

The PJ enjoys a high reputation in Portugal.

“They are ranked among the top five police forces in the world,” attorney
Trindad said, albeit admitting he did not know the source of this curious
international ranking.

Most PJ officers are graduates, and would-be entrants face severe
competition, with a battery of psychometric, physical and academic tests
before they can even be considered for the PJ training school.

The force’s Press office likes to compare the PJ to the American FBI: “We
are an elite,” spokeswoman Ana Mouro said.

But beneath the veneer, as the case of Leonor Cipriano suggests, the
reality can look less impressive.

“She is nothing like Kate McCann,” her lawyer Joao Grade said.

“She is very poor, with maybe only three years of schooling, and her
children have several fathers.

“She did not get to meet the Pope and she did not have the support of Sky
and the BBC.

“But I tell you this: if Kate had been treated like Leonor, she would have
done what Leonor did ? ended by saying, ‘OK, OK, I’m guilty, and this is
how I did it.’”

The special judicial order ? imposed on top of the usual Portuguese secrecy
? means not only that Grade is prevented from disclosing virtually anything
about the Cipriano case, but that pre-trial hearings of the charges against
the detectives, due as soon as next month, will be held in camera.

The Mail on Sunday has established crucial alleged details from other legal
sources in Portimao.

After Joana disappeared in September 2004, Leonor was arrested by the PJ in
Portimao on October 14 at 8am.

Held there and in the city of Faro without access to a lawyer, she was
interrogated without sleep for 22 hours.

Then, after a two-hour respite, she was interrogated again until 7am on
October 16.

By this time, as photos published by the Portuguese media make clear, her
face was a mass of bruises.

According to Grade: “Not just her face but her whole body was black and
blue.”

The police said she “tried to commit suicide” by throwing herself down
stairs.

If the alleged torture was to force a confession, it succeeded ? only for
Leonor to withdraw it when she finally saw her lawyer the next day.

The supporters of the accused police have claimed that the officers must be
innocent because Cipriano could not pick out her alleged attackers in an
identity parade.

However, according to the sources in Portimao, this is because they are not
alleged to have beaten her themselves, but to have brought in paid thugs.

In any event, she was convicted and sentenced to 21 years.

Last June, this was reduced on appeal to 16 ? though one of the five appeal
court judges issued a dissenting opinion, stating that he was convinced she
had been assaulted in custody and was innocent.

If the criminal case against the PJ officers does lead to convictions,
Grade said, she will appeal again. He has also lodged a case in the
European Court of Human Rights.

Strangely enough, Chief Inspector Goncalo Amaral is not the only link
between the Cipriano and McCann cases. Another of the senior officers who
is now an arguido is the recently retired Chief Inspector Paulo Pereira
Cristovao.

He is one of the McCanns’ principal scourges ? not as a detective, but in
his new capacity as a columnist for Diario de Noticias, among the most
active of Portuguese newspapers in its pursuit of stories about Madeleine
derived from leaks.

“There is another link between the Cipriano and McCann cases,” a Portimao
lawyer claimed.

“You know, it’s like if Manchester United lose a big game: next week the
pressure they have to win is very big.

“The PJ are beginning to worry that now they might lose the Cipriano case.

“If that happens, they have to win with the McCanns.”

Of course, there is yet another connection.

If Leonor Cipriano did not kill Joana, the chances of discovering the truth
? or indeed her body ? are now remote.

And as the McCanns have stated repeatedly, if they are innocent, the
enormous effort being poured into trying to blame them is effort diverted
from the search for a missing four-year-old girl, and the person or persons
who abducted her.

That is a thought so grim that it almost makes one wish that the mindset so
evident around Praia da Luz had a real foundation.

My fear is that it has as much solidity as the sandcastles on the beach.

• *David Rose has been investigating miscarriages of justice for 25 years
and has written several books on the subject.*