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Analysis of land where Maddie may be
buried still without a scheduled date
Searches in homes of former Ocean Club
workers in Praia da Luz were some of the
diligences that were requested by the
British police and rejected by the
Portuguese authorities for being
unfounded
The judge that received these requests,
which were in the rogatory letters,
didn't consider that the Scotland Yard's
arguments were valid. The detectives
wanted the Judiciary Police (PJ) to
perform the home searches because the
targets worked at the resort at the time
when Madeleine disappeared, which made
them "persons of interest".
The requests for searches and
excavations using dogs and a geo-radar
were treated differently and were
accepted, as JN reported yesterday. The
prosecutor at the Public Ministry in
Portimão authorised these diligences,
that are a turnaround in the British
investigation, with the Scotland Yard
assuming, for the first time, that they
consider the hypothesis of Madeleine
being dead.
The grounds were chosen because they are
"favourable to the disposal of a body".
JN knows that this was the key argument
that was used by the Scotland Yard to
fundament the request for searches.
These are locations that are close to
the apartment where the McCann family
spent their holiday, to the beach and to
a road that was under works at the time.
Another of the requests is the use of a
geo-radar that is able to analyse and
perforate the ground and two dogs that
signal the presence of cadavers.
Resources that the Scotland Yard wants
to bring from the United Kingdom. If any
deformation of the soil is detected,
there is permission to carry out
excavations. This process may drag on
for a while if the locations that
require excavations are private property
and roads under concession.
The next step is to define the
operation's strategy and to set the date
for the diligences, tasks that are up to
the PJ's Southern directory, which is
going to execute the diligences that are
authorised by the prosecutor. The PJ's
National Directory has to decide whether
or not the British detectives and
experts are allowed to closely watch the
diligences, which will always have to be
performed by the Portuguese inspectors,
given that the Scotland Yard has no
authority to act in Portugal. JN was
able to determine that a request in that
sense was sent to the Public Ministry
and informally communicated to the
Judiciary, but in order to be
considered, it has to be formalised with
the PJ's National Director, which has
not happened yet.
Sniffer dogs
The Scotland Yard refers to the dogs
that it wants to employ in the searches
as being "better" than Eddie and Keela,
the sniffer dogs that detected blood and
cadaver odour in the McCanns' car and in
the Ocean Club apartment.
Joint investigation
The Scotland Yard and Madeleine's
parents defend that the constitution of
a joint investigation team would
accelerate the discovery of Madeleine
and criticise the "excessive
bureaucracy" of the rogatory letters.
The logistics that is necessary to
perform these new diligences has high
costs. JN knows that these will be
funded by the United Kingdom, which has
already spent approximately 7 million
euro with this investigation. |
