Interview du Commissaire du Met, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe
BBC Radio 5 Live - 20.02.2014
Nicky Campbell : Errm...
Adeal in London... no, I tell you what, we'll go to Christine in
Cardiff. Brief points please because there's only eight minutes left,
so make your questions as... as, errr... well edited as you can. Hi,
Christine.
Christine : (phone in)
Good morning. Good morning, Sir Bernard.
Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe :
Good morning, Christine.
C : I'd like to
ask you, errr... on the progress of Operation Grange.
BHH :
Right, we have a lots of Op... Operations, so you're going to have...
NC : Operation
Grange, just...?
C : Operation
Grange.
NC : Which is?
C : It's the
investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
BHH : Ahh, right, thank you for helping...
C : That's okay.
BHH : ...but we do have a lot of Operations in London, so I'm sorry if I
didn't recognise it immediately.
NC : The
Portuguese police really mess... really messed up, didn't they?
BHH : Yes. [spoken in acknowledgment of the reference to the 'Portuguese
police' and before Nicky Campbell has finished his sentence]
C : Yes... no
[seemingly spoken in echo of Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe's 'yes' but then
realises it could be misconstrued and makes an attempt to change it
to 'no'. See her next comment]
BHH : Errm... I'm not going to respond to Nicky's comments.
C : (in
background) Did they Nicky?
BHH : I'm just going to... Let me just... let me just help. Where we are at
the moment: We've sent three letters of request for international
assistance to the Portuguese, errr... Judiciary, because that's the
way their system works, and also with the police - we are working
closely with them. Errm... obviously the Portuguese police have got a
line of inquiry which is different to the Metropolitan Police's but
we're working together to try and resolve that. Errm... we're trying
our best to keep the family informed and I think in the middle of all
this, quite often their torment gets lost. Have they lost a child or,
errr... by being murdered or... sadly... or have they lost a child by
someone else stealing them.
NC : Awful.
BHH : Either way, errr... they've got that terrible uncertainty, so we're
all trying our best to help resolve that. We...
NC : Do you
have suspects?
BHH : Errr... yes, we've said very clearly that, you know, we've got lines
of inquiry that, errm... are different to the Portuguese police and
we're working with them to try and resolve that and I'm only going
to... you know, that comment you made at the beginning, about, you
know, what they did or didn't do. We've got to work together on this
and I don't mean that as a naïve thing; I just think, generally.
We've generally got to work together. We can't police Portugal, they
can't do everything over here; we must work together. So, we're
insist... you know, we really can work in genuine partnership on
this. We're making some progress, errm... let's see how it comes over
the next few months.
NC : If you'd
been involved at the outset, do you think we might have got further
with this investigation?
BHH : Errr... I think that's a bit unf... that would be unfair. I mean
there's been inquiries in, errm... in the UK, where we know that the
police could have done better. I think to be too judgmental in these
cases is... is wrong and I wasn't there and I'm not going to judge
them. The main thing we're all committed to is trying to find that
little girl.
NC : And you
have lines of inquiry, you have 'suspects' lines of inquiry; you have
names.
BHH : That's right.
NC : Errm...
and I appreciate how you can't, at this stage, go any further,
errr... and have you spoken to those people?
BHH : Errm... I'm not going to go any further, really. Because that's what
you just said you didn't want!
NC : I'm sure
when you were interviewing people in that... in that little room
you'd try and sneak one in like that, Sir Bernard. I bet you have in
your time.
