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For the first time, Gonçalo Amaral
speaks about the case that destroyed his
career, his family and his health...
“My life is gone, I’m only alive due to
my heart”
Condemned to pay 500 thousand euro to
the parents of Maddie, the little
English three-year-old girl that
disappeared in Praia da Luz, in the
Algarve, on the 3rd of May of 2007, the
former inspector will fight until the
last legal instance, because he is “a
free man and citizen” with “the right to
express opinions”.
What was your reaction when you found
out that the verdict from the court was
unfavourable to you in the defamation
suit that the McCanns filed against you?
I found out about the verdict through a
friend who called me telling me about
the news on the radio. I immediately
called my lawyer, but he hadn’t been
notified and the verdict was not in the
process. It’s sad, but my lawyer could
only access the sentence, that
afternoon, because a British journalist
sent it to him by e-mail. There is no
doubt that the couple’s lawyer has good
connections at the court. My reaction
was one of calm and a wish to read the
full contents of the verdict as soon as
it was available on the Citius website,
which only happened the next day, but
with the date of the previous day.
Mysteries which the webs of justice
weave.
Were you surprised?
I wasn’t surprised, it was one of the
open possibilities, but after the
decision about the matter of fact, which
was favourable to me, I trusted that the
verdict would come in the same
direction.
Do you think there are errors in the
process? Do you feel wronged?
Those are not mistakes, but value
judgements and understandings that are
contrary to mine and to that of many
other jurists. As for feeling wronged…
What do you think? I can only ask if
those who, for more than five nights,
left their three children, aged three
and two, to their own devices in a house
within an unknown space, subjecting them
to a thousand dangers, while they were
partying with friends – not to mention
the amounts of alcohol that was ingested
on those occasions -, still has the
right to be compensated. They practiced
a crime of exposing and abandoning
defenceless children and they weren’t
even accused of that fact. Looking at
our criminal legislation, at the English
child protection legislation and at
cases that recently happened with
British subjects in the Algarve, after
drunken nights, all that I can say is
that the McCann couple is primarily
responsible for their daughter’s
disappearance. She only disappeared
because they neglected her guard and, as
parents, they were obliged to it. It is
a fact that they lost their daughter,
but that doesn’t give them the right to
sue anyone or to be compensated. They
can’t escape their guilt, which is
enough to rob them of their sleep, to
provoke a lack of appetite and even
rage, but against themselves and not
against someone who only wrote down what
happened during the first five months of
the investigation, according to what is
in the case files. If compensation takes
place, all that I can do is warn you: be
careful, there’s people who may turn
this into a new business!
Don’t you feel revolted by this verdict?
I don’t feel revolt, but I do not
conform to it, I still trust our
country’s justice system, for which I
have worked for over 25 years, and I
still am a free citizen with all my
rights. On the other hand, even the
question that Maddie’s siblings, then
aged two, may someday read my book and
become traumatized doesn’t concern me.
Those two children were also abandoned
for over five nights in a row and surely
they will understand that what is
written there is the result of a
criminal investigation.
There is a question that those two
children will certainly ask when they
grow up but that question will be
directed at the parents: why were they
abandoned, left to their own devices?
Those children are free to think and to
conclude that whatever happened to their
daughter could have happened to one of
them. The parents can only fear that
their two children who did not disappear
on that tragic night revolt against
them.
The court says that you caused Maddie’s
parents and siblings moral damages…
In my understanding, there are no
damages that, objectively and factually,
may have resulted from my writing. Which
is to say, there is no causal nexus
between the book or the documentary and
any damages. On the other hand, what is
spoken about, like the feelings of rage,
it can hardly be considered a damage.
The couple demanded one million two
hundred thousand euro. The court has
sentenced you to pay 500 thousand euro –
including interest since 2010 – over
damages that were caused by the
publication of the book Maddie: A
Verdade da Mentira. Aren’t both the
request and the damages awarded by the
court exaggerated?
There is no defamation crime, I haven’t
been tried over any crime, if at all I
am being tried over an offence of
opinion, something unthinkable 40 years
after the revolution of April of 1974,
which ended the [fascist] Estado Novo,
censorship and all the means that
oppressed Portuguese citizens from
thinking, speaking and writing freely.
On the other hand, what is in the book
is in the process, those are not lies,
that can be verified by comparing the
case files with the book and this court
has not put that truth at stake.
Nonetheless, a compensation of that
amount only clarifies that the McCann
couple is worth more than any Portuguese
citizen, dead or alive, and that they
are above any god or divinity, which,
according to politicians, Portuguese
intellectuals and others from the
so-called democratic world can be
criticized, ridiculed and satirized.
Look at the discussions about the
terrorist attacks against French
newspaper Charlie Hebdo… With my book I
did not defame, nor did I have the
intention to defame anyone, but merely
to report what happened during the first
five months of the investigation, thus
replying to the attacks against my good
name and my professional dignity. There
is no, no can there be any, reserve duty
that superimposes our right to react and
to defend ourselves from defamation and
injustice, putting the truth back when
our fundamental rights are violated,
even when the authors of such attacks
are subjects of a powerful country, to
which Portugal has always bowed, with a
short interregnum when the Portuguese
Republic was founded, largely a result
of the English ultimatum.
Apart from the payment, the court
decreed the prohibition of the sale of
new editions of the book Maddie: A
Verdade da Mentira. Nevertheless, the
Appellate Court had decided to annul
this prohibition back in 2010…
This court has not undone what had been
decided by Lisbon’s Appellate Court
within the injunction that was filed by
the complainants. It should be clarified
that the only decision that has, so far,
become effective is that of Lisbon’s
Appellate Court. That is the only one
that is in force, the rest is still
subject to appeal and it will take a few
years to come into force, while I hope
that our superior courts will see this
differently from the lower court. This
is just the judicial system working,
therefore we need to remain calm.
In a more practical manner, I can say
that the claimants, the McCanns, haven’t
won anything yet, they only lost, namely
with the decision from Lisbon’s
Appellate Court, which is very clear in
stating that the rights that have been
violated were mine, that I, within the
exercise of freedom of speech, could
write the book and practiced no illicit
action.
With this prohibition, are you forbidden
from emitting an opinion about the case
or about the McCann couple?
I am a free man, and like any other
citizen in this country, I have the
right to express my opinions. I was a
Criminal Investigation coordinator, a
policeman, and there is no reserve duty,
a functional or merely instrumental
thing, from the exercise of a
profession, that superimposes a
fundamental right and freedom of
expression. To state that the duty of
reserve limits freedom of expression for
life, or even during the exercise of the
profession of policeman, is to elevate
that duty, which is merely
administrative, above freedom of
expression and fundamental rights,
consecrated in the Constitution of the
Portuguese Republic, in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and on the
European Convention of Human Rights.
When you wrote the book, did it ever
occur to you that you could be
committing an offence?
I wrote the book because I, those who
worked with me and the institution of
the Judiciary Police were being put at
stake. My good name and professional
honour were severely attacked. In a
first phase, I started by writing to the
Judiciary Police’s national director,
asking him to allow me to defend myself
publicly or to come out to defend us,
and I obtained no reply. Today, after
all these years, I know that Dr. Alípio
Ribeiro never received my letter, which
was simply set aside by someone
hierarchically below him.
Faced with the inertia and the silence
from the institution that I belonged to,
which, in my opinion, had the duty and
the obligation to come out and defend
the men and women who, with their work
and great sacrifice, tried to protect it
by performing an investigation at the
level of any minimally developed
country, I decided to ask for my
retirement, and to report the criminal
investigation that had been carried out
and the conclusions that were reached up
to the moment that I coordinated said
investigation. At that time we already
knew that the case was going to be
shelved and the investigation abruptly
ended. Everything was being prepared in
that sense with the agreement, at least
tacit, from the parents of the missing
child, with the case files being
delivered to journalists by the Public
Ministry, which in itself question the
duty of reserve to which, according to
some experts, the policemen were subject
to.
The book was a way to reply to the
humiliation and the offences that I have
been targeted with. Deep down, that was
it: they say we are incompetent, they
say we are a third world police force,
drunkards, fat, lazy, etc., etc., and
the Judiciary Police does not set out to
defend us. Therefore I turned to
writing, reporting the investigation
that had been carried out, so people
could draw their own conclusions. What
happened next is known.
Do you feel abandoned by the
intellectuals and the writers of this
country?
Since I left the Judiciary Police, I am
part of no institution, I have no
political party, nor am I a member of
any sports, recreational, cultural or
social association, I do not belong to
any congregation or obedience. I wrote
three books (Maddie: A Verdade da
Mentira; A Mordaça Inglesa; Vidas Sem
Defesa), but I do not consider myself a
writer. I’m an outsider.
Is freedom of expression not compromised
by this type of verdict?
What is happening to me, since 2009, is
an attack against freedom of expression
and a trial over an offence of opinion.
The intellectuals of this country, in
general, have reacted with indifference.
I am not part of their group, and to
make things worse I’m an ex-policeman,
something that is reproved by many. As
far as I remember, only Dr. Francisco
Teixeira da Mota, when the Appeals
Court’s decision came out, wrote about
the matter, saying that the decision had
been correct, as the Portuguese State
risked being condemned by the European
Court for Human Rights… Someone asked me
why the Portuguese Authors’ Society had
not come out to defend freedom of
expression and to denounce the attack
that is underway. I replied I was not a
member, which may explain the silence.
Are you still dedicated to writing?
I continue to write, but I have yet to
decide when to publish. At the moment, I
am writing my memoirs about the
profession of criminal investigator.
Why are you economically suffocated?
Your house in Tavira went to the bank,
your consultancy firm had to close, one
third of your pension is arrested…
To all of those questions I only reply
that my life is gone. If I am alive,
it’s due to the heart that I have.
Have you never considered suing the
McCanns over the damages that they
caused to your family?
Each thing in its own time, it won’t be
only the McCanns, but their group of
friends, and other people and entities
that will be sued. There is an illicit
action that was indeed performed, the
neglect in guarding their children,
which caused direct damages to many
people, not only to myself, but for
example to the Ocean Club workers, who
were fired and saw their lives change,
many of them unjustly passing from mere
employees and heads of family to
suspects in a criminal investigation,
while they had nothing to do with the
matter.
Is there a project that you would like
to realise some day?
I would like to channel all the support
that I have been receiving into the
creation of an institution to support
children and teenagers at risk, in a
perspective of educating them for life,
escaping the benefits perspective,
promoting and building life projects
with them, helping them to escape
marginalization and the labeling
process.
With so many problems, do you still have
time to dream?
Dreaming is a part of free men, it costs
no money, it can’t be bought, and we
just live and feel it.
What remains unexplained in this case?
I don’t answer that question. Faced with
what was said by the couple, after the
verdict was known, that they felt
stronger, I just feel like saying that
only vampires become stronger with their
victims’ blood. Like Zeca Afonso
[Portuguese songwriter and singer] sang,
“they eat everything”…
Text: Alexandra Ferreira (alexandra.lemos.ferreira@impala.pt);
Photos: Lusa, Paula Alveno and IMPALA
in: Nova Gente, 15.05.2015, paper
edition |
