Anchor:
Concerning the outcome of searches to
find traces of Madeleine McCann, the
results are not very encouraging. Animal
bones, one sock from a man, two cannabis
plants were found and many soil samples
were collected. In Praia da Luz, few
believe in the success of this mega
operation by the English police.
Voiceover: The mega
search operation took a long time to be
authorised, but when the English police
received a green light from the Public
Ministry of Portimão, it moved into
Praia da Luz. The first location of the
police action was an extensive terrain
near the sea. Sniffer dogs went into
action, as well as geo-radars,
archaeologists and forensic geologists.
Around 30 members of the English team,
plus 15 from the Polícia Judiciária.
Forest sappers, GNR military, 24 hours a
day. The only thing missing was the
backhoe. Excavations were made with
pickaxes and shovels, at various
locations of the terrain, but one week
later, results were not as expected.
Rui Pando Gomes: This
is one of the spots where the English
police excavated, everyone had access to
the spot and was able to watch the
digging. The geo-radar detected a
potential grave, but in the end, what
was found was a stone.
Voiceover: In Praia da
Luz, few believe in the success of this
mega operation and even less in the
thesis that is presented by the English
police, that suspects that the child was
taken from home by three burglars.
Bystander 1: It has no
logic. What thief goes to burglarise a
house, takes a child, kills her, carries
her in his arms, in everyone’s sight,
walking down the street, and comes to
bury her here, on a terrain that is made
only of stones? That is crazy! That’s
all I have to say.
Voiceover: These
searches are being seen by residents and
tourists as one big police movie.
Bystander 2: A movie. A
movie, maybe. I don’t know if this is,
as we say, for the English to see. I am
a bit suspicious that this is going to
result in nothing.
Bystander 1: I think
that they won’t find anything here.
Animal bones, maybe, but otherwise…
Voiceover: And in the
middle of this movie, some risk a
possible scenario with different actors.
Bystander 2: The Smith
couple saw him on that street, he turned
the corner and could have hidden the
body in the garden of that abandoned
house. Then, at 6 o’clock – may I say
this? – the couple came, when everybody
had gone, picked up the body and came to
hide it here. It is possible.
Voiceover: Despite the
Portuguese authorities assuring that all
expenses are being borne by the British,
some have doubts about who is actually
paying the Portuguese forces that
stopped doing their job to be in Praia
da Luz.
Bystander 1: I would
like to ask that from the big ones, to
find out who is paying the gentlemen
from the GNR that are doing services
here every four hours.
Rui Pando Gomes: … and
the forest sappers…
Bystander 1: Exactly.
To all of them that are here, because
they say it’s the English that pay, but
I don’t see the English paying.
Voiceover: After a week
of searches, the collected residues are
kept in boxes. A man’s sock, animal
bones, two cannabis plants, soil samples
and a lot of rocks. Indications that
will be used to sustain the thesis of
the investigators, that say that Maddie
is dead and passed through this terrain.
Or simply to widen the mystery of the
disappearance of this English child.
Rui Pando Gomes: In
this mega search operation, many means
have been used. From the GNR, 40
officers were on location ensuring the
safety of this operation, 40 members of
the English police and of the Polícia
Judiciária were involved in the
searches, geo-radars were used, sniffer
dogs, forest sappers were on location,
and many people fought for this
operation to be successful.
Nevertheless, the evidence is scarce,
the indicia found are very few, the
final results are inconclusive.
Anchor: This is exactly
why we speak with Gonçalo Amaral, former
Polícia Judiciária inspector. He
followed this investigation in the early
days. Good evening, thank you for being
here.
Gonçalo Amaral: Thank
you.
Anchor: How do you see
the movie of the searches this week?
Gonçalo Amaral: That is
exactly it, it’s a movie. There are
British journalists who speak of a
farce, something staged for the media,
and maybe it's nothing more than that.
What is dangerous and serious is this
attempt to find a new thesis, a
so-called new theory about someone who
goes to commit a theft and is scared by
a three-year-old child and kills her and
takes her out of there, I think it's
convoluted.
But it’s nothing new. I remember that
within the investigation, back then, and
I recall that I spent six months in that
investigation, not seven years, or three
or four, like Scotland Yard – during
that time, there was this thesis, too.
And it happens that it was brought
forward by a colleague who was a member
of British Police, of Scotland Yard. He
was the only member of Scotland Yard who
was present in that work group of the
Polícia Judiciária and the British
police, he was Scotland Yard.
And when he advanced that hypothesis, it
was discussed and completely set aside
because it made no sense. Now they even
added a bit more spice, to spice it up,
that they are traffickers, that apart
from trafficking, one day they thought
of breaking into a house. Nobody proves
that house was broken into, that there
was a theft, there are no traces of a
break-in.
Anchor: There are these
traces, Gonçalo, of banking statements –
Gonçalo Amaral: What
banking statements? Those found on the
road, rubbish? We are speaking about
rubbish that is being found, and nothing
is being related with. The banking
statements don’t belong to the McCanns,
they weren’t taken from inside the
house. Nothing was taken from that
house. From that house, the only “thing”
which is not a thing, it’s a person,
that is missing is Madeleine McCann.
There is not a television, a photo
camera missing, nothing, no money is
missing, and there are no traces of a
break-in. Therefore, there was no
burglary there. There was no assault on
that house.
So now this theory is another show, a
farce like the papers and some British
journalists say, and that is all that it
is.
Anchor: And who is
writing this farce’s plot?
Gonçalo Amaral: It’s
Scotland Yard that is writing. They have
a certain difficulty to end the
investigations, they are getting to the
point of saying that she is dead, they
will reach the point of saying that the
cadaver can’t be found, and that the
case can’t be solved.
Anchor: They are being
pressured by the government, by the
McCann family, by whom?
Gonçalo Amaral: By
time. By time and by the money that they
have spent already, which is a lot. I
remind you that this is a special group
that has been on this investigation for
a long time and that this has already
cost the British public coffers
thousands of pounds. And now it also
costs ours, we saw some people
mentioning that, what is being spent in
terms of the Portuguese police, which is
surely not being paid by the British.
Anchor: I understand
that in your opinion, this is a
diversion manoeuvre, but what is the
purpose?
Gonçalo Amaral: It’s
not a diversion manoeuvre, it’s a way of
making forget what exists. If you
notice, while we are engrossed in the
searches, that are even performed on the
limit of the grounds for the press, for
the television cameras to film, the
grounds are huge but it’s on the border,
close by – nobody is discussing the case
files, nobody is discussing the indicia.
And returning to the indicia, there is
one that is proved and is included in
the report that the Portuguese police
wrote in September, after the
disappearance, at that time, and which
is the simulation of an abduction. So
there is the simulation of an abduction,
I ask: if these burglars are so
intelligent, so intelligent that “let’s
take away the child that is dead, that
died of fright or that we killed, and
that cannot appear because a homicide is
different from a theft, there is no
trace of theft, and on top of that we
simulate the abduction”. Notice that is
the story of the open window, everything
is open as if the child had been taken
through there.
And in fact these have to very
intelligent burglars. Then, they seem to
lose their intelligence, because all of
a sudden, they apparently went there on
foot, it is said that they are three but
only one was seen carrying the child in
that area, into the direction of those
grounds, leaves a body near the location
of the disappearance – this not
intelligence anymore. The intelligence
seems to have stopped at that moment.
But well, they say that there are phone
calls that place them there… there is no
substance, there is nothing there to
give this thesis credibility.
Anchor: But how do
these eight suspects appear, and with
the intention of questioning three of
them?
Gonçalo Amaral: They
appear because all that it takes is to
go to the list of phone calls made in
that location, during one or two days,
or on that night, and check who has a
criminal record. And these are
traffickers. And then there is a jump.
Traffickers are also burglars, they also
break into houses, so it goes. Anyone
who says that doesn’t know what drugs
trafficking is, or at least drugs
trafficking in the Algarve and the means
that it implicates and the people that
are behind it. Or we are talking about
the trafficker that consumes, who is
stealing to buy drugs and to sell some
drugs.
Then they say “we found two cannabis
plants in the middle of the field”. This
is where the drugs were kept. This is
madness. These are completely mad
people. If they moved further up, they
would not find a few plants, there are
hundreds of cannabis plants in that
area, because some foreigners, people
who live there, love the plant and they
have huge plantations in that area.
But that does not represent the traffic,
the trafficker in the Algarve. The
trafficker in the Algarve, the one that
dedicates himself to the traffic, in
terms of a relation with Morocco, with
other countries, the organized traffic,
who has some power, and that was also
discussed here at the beginning – he
even had a motorboat standing by at the
beach and took the child away and so on
– those are not going to burglarize
houses and even less are they scared by
three-year-old children.
Anchor: Gonçalo Amaral,
is there any cause-effect relation
between the fact that these searches,
these excavations started shortly after
Madeleine McCann was officially declared
dead by British authorities?
Gonçalo Amaral: That
death declaration, a declaration in
terms of, a civil death, which is a
mechanism that we also have in Portugal,
when someone disappears, I think it
Portugal it’s after five years –
Anchor: But these
excavations come afterwards, not before…
Gonçalo Amaral: This
had been discussed earlier on, it’s just
that now there was authorisation for
this type of excavations. Searches and
excavations in locations that had been
subject to searches and excavations
already, seven years ago. We were there.
It’s like raining on a wet spot. Well,
it may be that they have another type of
information, more credible, but let’s
see it. If they have something more
concrete, then they should go there
directly. They could have gone there on
the first day. There is no need for this
mise-en-scène to get to a certain point.
I think that they do not possess that
information and I even have doubts, in
case Madeleine McCann is dead, if the
body exists.
Anchor: Gonçalo, I’m
going to ask you to stay with us for a
little longer. We’re going to take a
look at more developments of this story,
as today the investigators dug again
near a hiding place that had been
searched before, and like earlier the
CMTV reporter said, tomorrow the first
phase of the work is closed and the
searches will be resumed on Wednesday,
at other locations in the surroundings
of Praia da Luz.
Voiceover: The
battalion of policemen and forensic
experts had an early start on the sixth
consecutive day of searches. The chief
of operations, Andy Redwood, insisted on
taking all of his notes and documents
along to the terrain, at a time when the
end of the first search phase comes near
its end.
In a race against time, the English
police used probes again to analyse the
subsoil in an area very close to the Rua
25 de Abril, and a few metres away from
several apartment blocks. The last areas
that the investigators believe were
moved and may contain some leads about
Maddie are being analysed. On the sixth
day of searches, some tiredness could be
seen in the faces of some of the members
of the English police, disguised with a
few smiles.
The cameras were always very close,
following the work in detail. The
operations went on, and not even a
collection of old bottles that was
recovered near an improvised building
escaped the investigators. A little
vegetable garden was also checked and a
lot of shrubbery was thoroughly
searched. Then, they took their pickaxes
again, and their shovels, and excavated.
Plastics and other buried objects led
the forensics experts back to the spot
in the area where earlier a hiding place
had been discovered.
Rui Pando Gomes: On the
sixth day, the English investigators bet
everything on an area where they had
earlier found a hiding place that was
covered with a zinc plate. In this area,
this first phase of searches will end on
Sunday. The next two grounds will be
subject to excavations on Wednesday and
Thursday.
Anchor: Our guest
Gonçalo Amaral already had the
opportunity to say that in his opinion,
all of this is a farce, but Gonçalo, so
much time later, they are looking for a
body, and that had not happened before.
Gonçalo Amaral: Well, I
heard an earlier version where they were
digging but still maintained the hope
that she is alive, so they are looking
for a hole where the child is living, so
there is some confusion here, also from
the British police. But in fact the
theory that the child is dead and that
it died that night in that apartment
exists since that time, since September
of 2007, and it was a conviction both
from the Portuguese police and the
British police that worked on the case.
So it’s not something new.
Now what is being done is to go to
everything that is in the process, and
try to do it again; they did a
reconstitution with actors in order to
say that the parents were not suspects,
they have e-fits of the person that took
the child that night, at 10 p.m. and
walked toward this area where these
searches are taking place, that happens
to be recognised by the Smith family,
witnesses, as being the child’s father,
Gerald McCann, so this is an attempt to
question the conclusions of that report
that is in the case files, forgetting
about the indicia that exist there, and
creating this ghost that there were some
rogues, drug traffickers, big drug
traffickers who one day decided to carry
out a burglary, which even didn’t go
very well, and who were scared of a
three-year-old child, and even simulated
an abduction, took the body away and
buried it close to home.
Just let me say this: The question of
missing children, and it would be good
if the British police or the Portuguese
police would say it, when these cases
happen, when a three-year-old child, who
is in someone’s care, in this case in
her parents’ care, disappears from that
location, the place where the body will
be placed will depend on two important
factors. One is the knowledge of the
terrain, what do those people know. And
the other one is the means, the ability
to move, to have a means of
transportation that can carry the body
further away.
When a body is searched, just like the
British police is doing, close to the
apartment, then they have no doubts that
the person that removed the body and
placed it there did not know the terrain
and had no means of transportation to
take it out of there. Whom does this
lead to? It doesn’t lead to any
burglars. It leads to those that were
responsible to care for the child. This
is in the books – books that everyone
has read. And maybe because everyone
read them, the body does not appear in
that area.
Anchor: Then there is a
declaration from Gerry and Kate, in the
middle of this week, that thank the
authorities for the support and for
their ongoing efforts to bring Madeleine
home. This is the expression.
Gonçalo Amaral: There
are other expressions. Mr Gerald McCann
said, a few years ago, two or three
years ago, I can’t remember, “if she is
dead then show us the body”. He will
know why he says “show us the body”.
There are other elements that point
towards the fact that no body exists.
Those elements should be taken into
account. Those that are in the
investigation should think how a body
could disappear, how it is possible for
this body to disappear under those
circumstances.
Anchor: Gonçalo Amaral,
let me ask a final question for a quick
reply. Will we ever find out what really
happened that night?
Gonçalo Amaral: Yes, we
will. When MI5 opens the case files, we
will find out. Don’t forget that the
British secret services followed the
case right from the beginning. On
location.
Anchor: So only in ten,
twenty years…?
Gonçalo Amaral: I don’t
know if that information will be made
available, but if it’s like in the
United States, it takes years to have
access to that kind of confidential
information. I’ll just tell you this. I
recall that – this is not conspiracy
theory. The searches that we made with
Eddie, with Keela, with the British
police, with the planning that is being
carried out now, with the British
forensics experts, and everything else,
there was one person that was
responsible for those searches, a
British citizen.
And at the end of those searches, at the
end of that result, he returns to
England, and he’s at the airport in
Faro, waiting for the plane to return to
England, and he receives a phone call.
He is accompanied by one of our
colleagues. And he then explains to our
colleague that there was a member of the
MI5 at the airport, waiting for him, to
talk with him about the result of the
investigation.
Therefore, we are not making anything
up. Everything has been made up. And
someone has the information, so make the
information available. From satellites,
from the secret services, from wherever.
Anchor: Gonçalo Amaral,
good evening and thank you for being
here tonight. |
