By Mark Saunokonoko - May 3, 2017
How the discrediting of
former top cop helps shut down damning Madeleine McCann theories
Goncalo Amaral, former
Policia Judiciaria inspector and leading investigator on the
disappearance of British child Madeleine McCann. Source: AFP
Crusading hero to many
and vindictive villain to others, the figure of Goncalo Amaral is
almost as much a part of the Madeleine McCann story as her parents,
Kate and Gerry.
Amaral was the original
supervising detective in the Maddie McCann case, an unsolved mystery
that has captivated the world since Portuguese police were called at
10.41pm on May 3, 2007.
That first phone call,
made some 41 minutes after Kate McCann claimed to have discovered
Maddie was missing, sparked a 15-month police investigation that came
under the most extraordinary media and political pressures.
Five months into the
investigation, and following the naming of Kate and Gerry as suspects
in the disappearance of their four-year-old daughter, Amaral found
himself removed from the case.
However, Amaral
sensationally reappeared just days after the Portuguese police
investigation was eventually shelved in July 2008, with an explosive
book that was hugely damaging to the McCanns.
His 22-chapter account,
titled Truth of the Lie, concluded Maddie had probably died in some
kind of accident inside holiday apartment 5A, that abduction was
staged and her tiny body had been disposed of by Kate and Gerry.
The McCanns launched an
expensive and protracted legal battle, using money from the millions
of dollars donated to the Find Madeleine Fund, to have Amaral's
personal account of the investigation banned.
Initially, the McCanns
succeeded before a 2016 court tossed that decision out and ruled
that the injunction had violated Amaral's freedom of expression.
Throughout the
investigation, and continuing to the present day, Amaral, now aged
57, has been continuously and methodically mauled by the British
tabloids and to a lesser extent various UK broadsheets.
Amaral's supporters
believe the ongoing assassination of his character and policing
methods helps shape the perception that his theories must be wild and
fanciful.
A man named Clarence
Mitchell, a former British government media mastermind, has been the
key strategist in the McCann's meticulous public relations campaign
for each of the 10 years since Maddie vanished.
Over the past week, as
the milestone tenth anniversary of Madeleine's approached maneuverings to discredit Amaral was once again evident in the pages
of the powerful and wide-reaching UK red tops.
Two high profile stories
that ran this week in The Sun and The Mirror both painted Amaral as
a kind of crackpot.
The first attributed
quotes to Amaral about Maddie being secretly placed inside a coffin
with a dead body which was later cremated; the second pushed Amaral's
supposed belief that British spy agency MI5 had helped hide Maddie's
body.
Amaral, in both
instances, was selectively edited and his comments were twisted out
of context.
The former cop has
previously spoken about the cremated coffin and related police
information about three figures seen entering a church in Praia da
Luz carrying a bag.
In a 2016 interview on
CMTV, he confirmed the McCanns were given keys to the local church,
close to where the family was staying. Inside there was a coffin of
an adult woman that was later incinerated.
During the TV appearance
Amaral explained that all possible angles of a missing persons case
should be explored by detectives.
"No one is saying
that the parents did that [put Madeleine's body in the coffin],"
he said.
The startling claim that
spooks from MI5 helped hide Madeleine's body is another disturbing
manipulation of the truth.
The facts are in the days
following Maddie's disappearance the UK government made the
remarkably unusual step of becoming closely involved in another
sovereign nation's police investigation.
British police were sent
to Portugal to assist, while the British ambassador to Portugal and
other officials also arrived in Praia Da Luz within 48 hours of
Madeleine being reported missing.
A former UK ambassador to
Uzbekistan and ex-Foreign Office civil servant, Craig Murray,
publicly questioned "the exceptional treatment from British
authorities" for the McCanns.
"British diplomatic
staff was under direct instruction to support the McCanns far beyond
the usual and to put pressure on the Portuguese authorities over the
case," Murray wrote in an April, 2016 blog post.
"I have direct
information that more than one of those diplomatic staff found the
McCanns less than convincing and their stories inconsistent.
"Embassy staff were
perturbed to be ordered that British authorities were to be present
at every contact between the McCanns and Portuguese police."
There were criticisms
that the Policia Judiciaria were leaking rumours and unsubstantiated
facts of the case to Portuguese journalists while starving the
hungry British press corp.
Ian Woods, a Sky News
reporter on the ground in Praia Da Luz, explained how that dynamic
divided the British and Portuguese journalists, creating an 'us' and
'them' agenda.
"For the first few
weeks or months the British media were largely pro-McCann and the
Portuguese media seemed largely anti-McCann," Woods wrote in a
2009 study examining media coverage of the case.
As the days ticked over
into weeks, and with no sign of Maddie's return, the British press
began to attack the way the investigation was handled.
On reflection, Amaral has
admitted the Portuguese investigation, inevitably, made mistakes.
One of his biggest
regrets, he said, was not immediately putting surveillance traces on
Kate and Gerry's phones.
Amaral also lamented the
failure of police to immediately obtain the clothes Maddie had worn
at the resort crèche on the day she disappeared.
The McCanns have not
ruled out trying to again ban The Truth of the Lie by taking the
legal fight with Amaral all the way to the European Court of Human
Rights.
Meanwhile, rumours have
circulated that Amaral is planning a second book.
Ten years on, Madeleine
Beth McCann remains missing.
