Here is a quotation from Goncalo Amaral concerning the timeline in the Madeleine McCann case.
www.mccannfiles.com...
'CM newspaper' programme: Maddie Case
cmtv.sapo.pt...
Gonçalo Amaral: As far as accurate times are concerned, there are only three: The time at which they pick up Maddie from the crèche, which is
at 5.30 p.m., the time of the payment at the restaurant by the Irish family, which is at 9.22 or 9.27 p.m., and the time of the phone call to GNR
(Note: Guarda Nacional Republicana), which is at 10.47 p.m. From there on, nothing is certain.
en.wikipedia.org...
Law enforcement in Portugal is the responsibility of three bodies:
Guarda Nacional Republicana - National Republican Guard. A Gendarmerie who mainly work in rural areas too small to warrant the PSP, and provide
a national highway patrol and fiscal guard.
Polícia de Segurança Pública - Public Security Police. Civilian police force who work in larger urban areas.
Polícia Judiciária - Judicial Police. Overseen by the Public Ministry, they investigate criminal cases.
Amaral's concern in this, one assumes, is that a proper reconstruction of the events of the night of May 3, 2007, might provide one or two more
indisputably accurate points on the timeline of this missing person's case. The Smith family's (the Irish family's) sighting of someone carrying a
small blonde girl five or ten minutes walk from the McCanns's Ocean Club apartment must be coordinated with movements of the Tapas 9 to and from the
Tapas bar and therefore those movements must be known as accurately as possible. A reconstruction of events, involving the Tapas 9, all of them, is
the most efficient way to pin those movements to the evening's timeline..
No adequate reconstruction has ever been done.
The most important reconstruction done to date has been the reconstruction done in connection with production of the video
Madeleine Was Here,
in which Gerry McCann and some of the Tapas 7 took part.
During that reconstruction an inconsistancy emerged between what Gerry McCann said and what Jane Tanner said about a specific point, the location of a
chat between Jeremy "Jez" Wilkins and Gerry. The disagreement was smoothed over by the retired detective the McCanns had hired to investigate
Madeleine's disappearance on their behalf.
The McCanns and the Tapas 7, their holiday travelling companions, have been very skittish about helping the police reconstruct the events of May 3,
2007.
Here is a statement of position, given by Gerry McCann to
The Portugal News in 2009, on the case, and especially on the subject of
participating in a reconstruction of events surrounding Madeleine's disappearance.
www.mccannfiles.com...
Closing arguments in Amaral libel case set for January
Speaking to The Portugal News in early 2009, Gerry McCann stressed "that there is no evidence that Madeleine is dead and there is no evidence to
suggest that Kate and I were involved in any theories."
Gerry McCann also insisted they would have been legally compelled to be available for a reconstruction due to their status as arguidos, even the
motives of Portuguese police were questionable.
"Don't get me wrong, we had major concerns as to why the reconstruction was being done", arguing that "the police reconstruction was not aimed at
finding Madeleine, but rather to look for inconsistencies. There were 12 or 15 people involved and it is inevitable there would be
inconsistencies."
Dr. McCann's statement, above, in fact and on the contrary, might actually be seen as a cause for "major concerns" among the police investigators as
to why a reconstruction was being
avoided.
Dr. McCann's statement appears to imply that he himself is way ahead of the police on this investigation. It implies that there is no cause to suspect
or to eliminate from consideration any of the Tapas 7 from involvement, even
inadvertent involvement, in his daughter's disappearance.
Dr. McCann's statement appears to imply that it would not be helpful for the police to attempt to determine precisely the moments when Madeleine might
have been snatched.
Dr. McCann's statement appears to rule out the possibility that there might be Ocean Club staff involvement in Madeleine's disappearance or
alternatively that Ocean Club staff anywhere on the property of the resort at the time might have seen something,
at a particular moment, that
could put investigators on Madeleine's trail.
Dr. McCann's position would appear to be that the best place to pick up that trail is at a considerable distance from where it started; Spain, the
Netherlands, Morocco perhaps.
This position is hard to take seriously. It is as if a doctor attempting to diagnose a patient's illness were to start the diagnosis in another ward
of the hospital from the one containing the patient.
People who have followed this case closely will know that there are reasons, libel lawsuit fright and political embarassment, why questionable
theories of criminal investigation have been allowed to flourish in the press and indeed prevail in the police departments of two countries, over
historically established theories of criminal investigation, theories of the sort advocated by the Policia Judiciaria and the Leicestershire
Constabulary.
The following is excerpted, with minor modifications, from one of my posts in an earlier thread,
Madeleine McCann: Vector Addition.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
There are some good repositories of research devoted to the case of the missing Madeleine McCann, mccannfiles.com and others. Some blogs
contain information that one doesn't see often, if ever. One poster to a Madeleine forum, Truth for Madeleine, writing as bugalugs1970
tracked down the first mainstream press story about this case.
truthformadeleine.com...
The current URL of the story that appearin the Telegraph is:
www.telegraph.co.uk...
Three year-old feared abducted in Portugal
By staff and agencies
12:01AM BST 04 May 2007 Comments
A three-year-old British girl has gone missing while on a family holiday in Portugal, the Foreign Office said today.
Portuguese police are investigating the disappearance from a holiday complex in Praia da Luz in the western Algarve.
A Foreign Office spokesman said that he understood the girl's parents had gone to have dinner once their children were asleep last night, but returned
to check on them only to find the girl had gone missing.
"They reported it straight away," he said, adding that consular assistance was being offered.
The dateline of this story is 12:01AM BST 04 May 2007. In Portugal the time would have been the same 12:01 AM, because that country is in the
same timezone as the UK.
There is some dispute as to the exact time that Madeleine's disappearance was discovered and reported by Kate McCann. For the sake of discussion,
let's say that the disappearance was reported at 10:00 PM on May 3, 07.
A British child goes missing in Portugal and exactly 121 minutes later a press story appears on the website of the Telegraph newspaper
announcing that there is a child missing in Portugal and this announcement is made by the British Foreign Office.
121 minutes!!!
Let's try to construct a timeline of events working backward from the precise moment at 12:01 AM when someone pressed the key on their computer to
upload the story to the web.
12:01 AM 04 May 07: Story is uploaded.
11:58 PM 03 May 07: Story is typed up and proofread.
11:45 PM 03 May 07: Data entry staff receives email from editor containing story after having been phoned and alerted to situation.
11:35 PM 03 May 07: Night editor of Telegraph receives phone call from publisher or editor in chief informing him of the details of the story
which he takes down over the phone. There is minimal discussion. He relays story and instructions to publish immediately to his staff.
11:15 PM 03 May 07: Foreign Office press officer phones Telegraph publisher and relates the substance of the story and requests immediate
publication of it. He agrees to accept attribution of the story to the Foreign Office. There is some minimal discussion. The publisher agrees to print
the story in accordance with long established protocols between the press and the FO.
11:13 PM 03 May 07: Mr. X, a functionary of the Foreign Office at a level somewhere in support of the Minister of State for Europe, Geoffrey
Hoon (in 2007), gives instructions to the FO press officer, above.
11:00 PM 03 May 07: Mr. X is instructed by a superior in the Foreign Office to relay the substance of the story of the disappearance of
Madeleine McCann to the Telegraph through established channels.
This is irregular and it is difficult to understand the purpose of it. Mr. X would have remarked this undoubtedly. Usually such stories would be
"broken" independantly by the press itself or through official statements from Interpol or other police agencies.
The "Foreign Office" attribution for the story is the sticking point.
Keep in mind that only a little over an hour has passed since the disappearance of the child! What if the child were to be found? Twenty minutes later
the Foreign Office might have to issue another press release with the happy news.
If the British ambassador in Portugal were the first member of the Civil Service to hear of this story and wished to expedite press coverage of it, he
would normally use backchannels of his own to alert the press and ask for an "unnamed sources" attribution of the story.
Keep in mind that even a quickly solved child disappearance is a winner in press circles. The ambassador would not have to twist arms to get the story
published, or would he?
Does the press normally publish stories about children who have been missing only for a little over an hour?
10:XX - 11:00PM: Information and a request for assistance in the matter of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann moved from Portugal to a
ministerial level in the UK where discussions took place and a decision was made to issue an alert to the press, with Foreign Office attribution,
for a child who had been reported missing less than an hour before.
10:00 - 10:XX Madeleine was discovered to be missing and after searching for less than an hour, political help in the situation was sought in
the UK and received.
End of excerpt.
Has anyone reading this thread ever tried to get
a government department to do ANYTHING after 10:00 PM?
Good luck trying. Pack a lunch. Bring a sleeping bag.
Securing the Foreign Office press release had to have been done through a special channel and considering the mechanics of actually doing such a
thing, must have required a channel to the highest level of government in the UK at the time, to either Prime Minister Blair himself or to someone
else with enough power to make functionaries at the Foreign Office move
immediately, even in the middle of the night.
But why?
The Foreign Office could not scour the Portugese hinterland for Madeleine.
In fact the press release gives the appearance of having almost nothing to do with Madeleine. There is no description of Madeleine in the press
release. All it contains, beside the fact of an anonymous missing three year old, is an account and virtual validation of the conduct of the parents
of the missing child.
Recalling what Goncalo Amaral said at the beginning of this post, and assuming it is accurate, we know that the first call made to the Portugese
police in this case was received at
10:47 PM, and it was made to the GNR, the Portugese local police in Praia da Luz, which is also,
importantly,
the highway patrol.
Did the McCanns or their friends make calls to political friends immediately or only after becoming frustrated with the response of the GNR? If the
latter, the time line to the Foreign Office press release is nearly impossible to believe.
The McCanns are stated to have alerted to Madeleine's disappearance at 10:00 PM. The GNR was telephoned at 10:47 PM according to Goncalo Amaral. The
press release from the Foreign Office was on the Telegraph website one hour and fourteen minutes later at 12:01 AM.
Is this doable, even with a direct line to the Prime Minister's personal cell phone or bedside line? Perhaps, but one is still left with the question,
"Why do it?"
According to the Portugese police officers, the McCanns were presenting as hysterical when they arrived on the scene. Maybe one grasps at cabinet
level connections when one is hysterical, "eyeless in Gaza" so to speak, over the disappearance of a child.
Maybe one simply responds to the hysteria with compliance. Maybe one files the press release and forgets to actually describe the child because one
knows that the press release is a useless exercise anyway.
It does make sense. Just.
edit on 6-12-2013 by ipsedixit because: (no reason given)