So now, at last, their fightback can begin. After months of gossip and rumour,
lies and innuendo, prejudice and defamation, Kate and Gerry McCann are allowed
to state their innocence and throw water on one part of their living hell.
And it's all down to the Portuguese judge Pedro Daniel dos Anjos Frias, who
halted the tide of invective against them by showing sanity in telling them
their presence in court will not be required.
With those words, the tide began to turn, scales fell off the eyes and the
McCanns were able to put up a defence against allegations which label them the
most evil of killers.
A defence which backs up what most of us on the outside looking in felt in our
guts all along: that this couple have no case to answer.
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That there is no hint of credibility in the assertion that these two devastated
people are anything other than devoted parents who made a complacent error in
leaving their daughter alone in bed on holiday as they went out for a meal.
That they have been punished by having the most grotesque nightmare visited on
them. That while poisonous Poirots thirst for their convictions and their heads,
their little Madeleine could still be alive, somewhere out there, crying for
their arms. I was convinced of their innocence all along. So were most of the
people I know. As their spokesman said yesterday, the accusation that such
clearly loving parents would kill their daughter, hide her body and move it
weeks later, under the eyes of the world's media are "as ludicrous as they are
nonsensical".
They would have to have been genius actors, with first-class criminal minds and
cold-hearted to the point of Satanic.
You would have to have been a buffoon or cold-hearted to the point of Satanic
yourself to go along with that theory. Yet many have.
Look at the internet, listen to the bar room bores, tune into a phone-in, and
you will still hear a sizeable number of ghouls certain of their guilt.
A mate of mine believes they did it. He was disgusted that they left their three
kids in the room unattended, thinks they are ambitious doctors who killed her by
mistake, then fearing for their careers, kept her death quiet and buried her.
Moreover he believes attacking the Portuguese police is a racist sideshow. I
believe he's a contrary Right-On trying to make a point. Because I can't see how
any sane person could have convinced themselves the McCanns were capable of
doing this and covering it up.
To believe that you would have to have been taken in by the laughable case
presented by a chronically inefficient police force under horrendous pressure to
deliver: the "scent of death" on a GP's clothes; the unspecified DNA in the car;
the confused reports of movement on the night she disappeared; Kate shouting
"they've taken her, they've taken her" when she discovered Madeleine missing.
All weak, circumstantial or unsubstantiated evidence that wouldn't last a second
in court.
To believe they did it, you would have to have fallen for foreign newspaper
reports claiming Madeleine had been force-fed sleeping pills and dumped in the
sea in a bin bag from a British owned yacht.
That they are obsessed with PR, enjoyed being filmed with the Pope, and don't
want the spotlight to go away because they are getting off on it.
You would have to have believed all the vile abuse aimed at the McCanns on the
internet - "he's a wife-beater... she's a manicdepressive"- by strangers who
haven't got a clue who these people are, or an ounce of pity in their souls.
It may have been trained dogs sniffing out the scent of blood which allowed the
Portuguese police to name the McCanns as suspects.
But move outside the Algarve and you didn't need a hound to sniff out the ugly
mob mentality that has been under the surface of public opinion all summer.
So thank God the Portuguese legal system has given them the chance to fight
back. Thank God for some sanity in a world obsessed with gossip, smears and
instant mob justice. |
