Citation

"Grâce à la liberté dans les communications, des groupes d’hommes de même nature pourront se réunir et fonder des communautés. Les nations seront dépassées" - Friedrich Nietzsche (Fragments posthumes XIII-883)

12 - MAI 21 - J. Gamble (Four Corners)


Kate MC : Every night we had dinner at a nearby tapas restaurant. It was very close to our apartment. At 10 o' clock, when I went back to check on the children, which we'd been doing every half hour, just in case one of them had maybe woken up, I discovered that Madeleine had been taken.  
'in case", maybe".... Seulement si l'enfant qui n'est plus là n'a aucune autonomie de mouvements peut-on dire qu'il "a été pris".
Gerald MC : You're just thrown into this absolute nightmare. Terrifying ordeal; I think the worst thing that could happen to a parent.
KMC : When I imagine somebody lifting Madeleine out of the bed, and I Madeleine at some point waking up, I just... so horrific that I just... your brain struggles to accept it as real. 

C'est la sidération, la tentation de se dire que le réel n'a pas eu lieu, pensée beaucoup plus commode.




Philipe Geluck - Le Chat

Interview de l'ex-directeur du CEOP*
21.05.2012
Kerry O'Brien : Five years on, Madeleine McCann is still missing. In England, her parents still grieve, and police are back in the hunt. Welcome to Four Corners. Reliable data is hard to get, but it's estimated that, worldwide, something like eight million children disappear each year, and the United Nations says that at any one time, close to two-and-a-half million people are victims of human trafficking - most of them for sexual slavery. Madeleine McCann was just days away from her fourth birthday when she disappeared from a Portuguese coastal resort. The story made headlines around the globe. With Britain's tabloid press ramping up pressure, local police struggled for leads in their search for Madeleine and her alleged abductor. Before long, in the face of accusations that they had botched the investigation, police were pointing the finger at Madeleine's parents, casting doubts on their story.  
On a l'impression que la police se venge, on la fustige, elle accuse.  
Eventually, the Portuguese police closed the case, leaving the parents to swing in the breeze of public opinion.  
Ce sont les parents qui n'ont pas voulu passer à la phase "instruction".  
The parents, meanwhile, had launched their own private investigations, 
ils n'ont pas attendu la classement, quinze jours après la disparition des privés enquêtaient  
 and eventually, in the wake of a book written by Kate McCann, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, ordered a new investigation.  
Pas une enquête, une révision du dossier ! 
Some 30 specialist police are on the trail, and expressing optimism that they can crack the mystery. But they're going to have to find new evidence strong enough to force Portuguese police to re-open the case. In the meantime, if she's still alive, Madeleine will have just turned nine.

KOB : One of the significant questions related to Madeleine McCann’s disappearance is this: if she was targeted by child traffickers, what would they have wanted with a three or four-year-old? Are children targeted that young? Former senior Scotland Yard investigator, Jim Gamble, has led the British National Crime Intelligence Service fight against child sex abuse, and he was the head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre within the UK police, which did some analysis for the Portuguese police early in the investigation of Madeleine’s disappearance. He subsequently did a scoping study for a review of the case in 2009 for the previous Labour government. Jim Gamble had since got to know the McCann’s personally, and he joins me now from London. Jim Gamble, let’s get one obvious question out of the way, first-up: from everything you know personally about the McCanns and the case, do you believe they had anything to do with Madeleine’s disappearance?
Jim Gamble : If it ever came out that either of the McCanns were involved in this, I will be absolutely shocked. 
Ce type de question est aberrant. On sait que le serial killer pourchassé par la police s'est révélé le charmant voisin du dessous, si serviable, si poli, etc.

KOB : Why do you say that?
JG : Well, from everything I know about it, it’s not that as a professional police officer they wouldn’t have been first on my list of suspects, because actually, of course they would – they’re the parents, they were there, they had last access. But having been involved in the periphery to a greater or lesser degree on different occasions with this case, having met the McCanns, having seen their children Sean and Amelie around them, I just would be shocked. There’s nothing which gives me that feeling; there’s no evidence which makes me feel that they are in any way complicit in the disappearance. But I’m a human being, you know, and we can err. I’m simply saying that I would be shocked if either one of them were proven to be involved in any way in this.

KOB : Given the five year time lapse since Madeleine’s disappearance, what do you think the chances are of finding her, even with such a well-resourced UK police team?
JG : Well, I think there’s always hope, and nobody should take away hope from parents who have to get up and look after their other two small children every day. And people often talk to be about the statistics and what’s most likely to have become of Madeleine. Jaycee Dugard turned up after many, many years, having been abducted from a bus stop near her home. And when we began to look at the Minute from Madeleine Initiative video, which we created in CEOP some years back, we looked at a number of cases where children had gone missing, been abducted, and many years later were found, or came back themselves. So, I think there’s always hope. As the years go on, of course, it’s harder to sustain that, and that’s one of the reasons I think we all welcomed the recent Metropolitan Police investigation, and the way it’s breathed new life back into this enquiry.

KOB : What’s your basis for saying “it’s breathed new life”? Because, because my next question is, why the British police would succeed where the Portuguese police failed, given that at least the Portuguese had a fresh trail to try and follow.
JG : Well, I don’t think it’s so much where the Portuguese police failed. The investigation in the early days was complex, as these investigations are, but it was complicated by the fact that it covered such a vast geography. And none of us – you know, the British, the Portuguese, or others – were very good in those early days, because it’s not something we do very often. And what happened because of that was that information would be held in different places, and perhaps shared in different ways. Now, with the Metropolitan Police and the level of competence that they have, and experience in these complex investigations, they bring something new to the table. I think there is a willingness within Portugal to have a look at anything the Metropolitan Police find that’s fresh, and critically, what I believe the men are doing is bringing together the disparate pieces of information that perhaps sat elsewhere in the UK or in Portugal, and, for the first time, aggregating it in a way that all of that information can be interrogated at a single point.

KOB : What did you and your team highlight in your scoping study of the study, as areas for fresh attention?
JG : Well, without going into too much detail, what we identified was that the information was all over the place. That the fact that a number of difference agencies had very enthusiastically and appropriately helped in their own ways, having itself created a difficulty because there was a lack of coherent leadership, I believe, at different times throughout the investigation – that’s simply from the UK perspective. At the very beginning of this investigation, everybody, including myself and CEOP, rushed to help. And because we don’t deal with this type of cases, thankfully, on a day-by-day basis, and we were learning as we went along, so I think there were little pots of information, and some big pots of information, that could have been dealt with better. So we identified that, recognised it. We also identified a number of other areas, and a number of other anomalies, where perhaps some of the other information that would have been available, and had been captured, but never properly interrogated. And as the Metropolitan Police are going through a life investigation now, I think it would probably be unhelpful of me to go into any greater detail on that. 


KOB : Can you understanding why David Cameron did eventually reopen the case?
JG : Well, I’m glad you used the word “eventually”. I am thrilled that he, you know, prompted the new review by the Metropolitan Police, but the report which we put in, which highlighted all of the anomalies that are currently being discussed, and have been discussed for some time. That was on that government desk as they came in to par. The home secretary had it, and it’s unfortunate that it took an open letter from Gerry McCann, on the front of a national newspaper, to prompt David Cameron to do this. But maybe he was unaware that the home secretary already had a report highlighting these issues, but it shouldn’t take the plea of a parent in a desperate circumstance to get the prime minister to do the right thing. But now that he’s done it, absolutely fantastic. With his backing behind it, I think it has more hope than it ever had before.

KOB : What was your reaction to the book that came out from the former leader of the Portuguese investigation, particularly when essentially the finger was being pointed at the McCanns?
JG : Well, first of all, I think it was unprofessional, and secondly, I think it was unhelpful. The fact that this individual perpetrates a view that is clearly his – that the McCanns are guilty, or suggests that the McCanns are guilty of this offence – that’s troublesome from a number of issues. That’s an issue for a court to decide, and secondly, when a professional police officer, when someone with the access to information that that role would suggest that individual has, starts going down one specific line, it takes our eye off the broader picture. It stops being looking, because they believe, “Well, there’s no point, we know who did it”. Now, I’m aware of cases myself that I’ll not go into in detail here, where because certain individuals have assumed that one person was guilty, the real person, the real culprit, when free for many, many more years than they actually should have, simply because everyone said, “Well, there’s no point. We know who did it, we can’t prove it, so let’s carry on with our day jobs”. I think what he’s done is foolish. 
Pas très professionnel (comme il dirait) de la part de JG de dénigrer un commissaire. GA s'est peut-être trompé, mais il n'était pas seul et toute son équipe était du même avis. Par ailleurs de quoi les MC ont-ils été suspects, pas coupables (la culpabilité est l'affaire de la justice) ? D'un délit, celui de recel de cadavre.

KOB : Now, if I understand your position correctly, if you had been conducting an investigation like this, you’d have started with the parents and taken a very quick look and either established there was something suspicious, or you’d have ruled them out and moved on. Now, if I understand it correctly, the Portuguese were kind of the other way around. It took them some time to suddenly develop the view that the McCanns might have been suspicious.
JG : Well, I think that’s a fair assessment. When we carried out the scoping review, in order to be fair, what we did was, we said, “Let’s take a sleepy seaside town somewhere in the UK, and imagine that, you know, late in the evening, a couple had come to us who didn’t speak English as their first language, and who were Portuguese and said, ‘Look, our child has gone missing’”. I think what we accepted immediately is we would have faced a complicated scenario similar to that which the Portuguese did. You’re not sure whether the child has simply walked away or been taken away, and it does take a period of time to get that information together, so there were clearly difficulties, and we would all face those. In the immediate aftermath, the systematic approach is what is key, and certainly as professional detectives, we use the phrase “clear the ground beneath your feet”. Look at that which is immediately in front of you first of all. And the only difference between the Portuguese and myself would have been that the first suspects that I would have looked at would have been the parents.  Même si les victimes sont médecins, même si l'ambassadeur de leur pays veille tandis que le consul ne les quitte pas ? Même si une meute médiatique internationale est sur les lieux ?

KOB : Given what you know about child abduction, if this was an abduction (il faut être en Australie pour entendre ça), what are the most likely possibilities?
JG : Well, you can start from someone who has perhaps lost a child, the balance of their mind may be disturbed, and they take someone else’s child to replace theirs – to meet an emotional need that they have. Pourquoi prendre une fillette qui ne révoltera alors qu'il y a le choix entre deux todlers, fille et garçon?  
And then move to the sexual predator, who perhaps would target a child, engage that child, capture them and abuse them – and we’ve seen that happen around the world. And then you come to the point of the actual trafficker – someone that would perhaps target a particular child for sale into a specialist or particular market somewhere else around the world. And these things happen, and whilst we can look at the statistical analysis of the likelihood of children still being alive, alive after each of those scenarios, there is always the exception to the rule – Jaycee Dugard is a good example of a child who was actually abducted and abused, and still alive today.  
Il faut quand même dire que c'est pratiquement le seul exemple, cité et recité à défaut d'un autre. JD avait une dizaine d'années quand on l'enleva, dans la rue, sous les yeux de son beau-père qui désespérément poursuivit la voiture des ravisseurs.

KOB : If Madeleine was the target of professional child traffickers, is it at all common, or is it unusual for somebody that young to be targeted?
JG : No, I don’t think it’s uncommon for someone that young to be targeted.  
JG est bien le seul à penser cela ! 
But, I mean, in our experience, a Western child being targeted and abducted by child traffickers, is very, very rare, because the publicity that surrounds it is so massive. I mean, we often hear the argument, “Why so much attention for one little girl, when so many go missing?” It’s a very complicated set of circumstances, missing children, but the kids that go missing because they’ve been abducted – abducted by someone other than a parent in a parental dispute – they’re rare.  
Encore beaucoup plus rares au Portugal qu'en Grande-Bretagne. 
That’s why, if you come to the UK, we’ll be able to talk about Holly and Jessica, we’ll be able to talk about Milly Dowler, we’ll be able to talk about Madeleine McCann – because those cases are so rare, they strike a chord with every parent, that you never ever forget the names of the children or the incident involved. So the cases are rare, but it’s not unusual for traffickers to target particular children for particular clients.

KOB : Is there anything to suggest that this was the work of professional criminals?
JG : Well, first of all, I’m not privy to information in the current investigation, so I really wouldn’t be comfortable speculating about that.
KOB : What do you think the odds are that we will ever know what has happened to Madeleine McCann?
JG : I believe in my lifetime we will find out what happened to Madeleine McCann. I believe, in all of these cases, someone is looking over their shoulder somewhere. The person that did this knows, and they’ll be concerned that other people around them might also know. And relationships change over a period of time, and if the person that did this ever watches your program, ever watches this interview on YouTube or on the television, they need to know that someone suspects them somewhere, and it’s only a matter of time until they come forward with that information, with that hint, with that degree of suspicion which will finally turn the spotlight on them. I believe we’ll find out who did this, and I believe the person involved in it would be better coming forward now and doing the right thing. It’s never too late for the person who did this to come forward and give Gerry and Kate the peace of knowing what has happened to their daughter.

 

* Le Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, créé en 2006, a été absorbé par la NCA (National Crime Agency), le 7 octobre 2013 en raison du  Crime and Courts Act 2013.



Il y a énormément de choses à discuter dans cette courte transcription et la majeure partie concerne le rôle et l'agenda de Jim Gamble :

* L'intervieweur mentionne les enquêtes privées, mais ne dit rien sur les deux enquêteurs principaux des McCann en 2007 et 2008, Antonio Gimenez Raso et Kevin Halligen, tous deux en prison depuis 2009

* Andy Redwood a-t-il exprimé l'optimisme comme quoi il pourrait «percer le mystère»?

* Jim Gamble dit qu'il serait «choqué» si jamais il s'avérait que les McCann avaient quelque chose à voir avec les parents de Madeleine. Cela suggère un niveau d'incertitude de sa part, même faible. Dans ce cas, pourquoi s'est-il engagé si énergiquement à promouvoir la «vidéo d'une minute» virale de McCann et à promouvoir le Dr Gerald McCann en tant que porte-parole lors de conférences sur les abus sexuels envers les enfants?

* Gamble dit qu'il a "été impliqué à la périphérie de cette affaire" à un degré plus ou moins élevé". Comment pouvez-vous vous impliquer dans la pré-périphérie d'un dossier «dans une large mesure»? Surtout à la lumière de cette interview, Gamble a l'air d'être au cœur de l'affaire Madeleine McCann depuis 5 ans

* Gamble dit: Jaycee Dugard est arrivée après de nombreuses années après avoir été enlevée d'un arrêt de bus près de chez elle. C'est ce qu'elle a fait - et Gamble la mentionne deux fois dans sa courte interview, car bien sûr, il ne peut penser à aucun autre exemple. Mais Jyacee Dugard avait 11 ans quand on l'a saisie à un arrêt de bus en plein jour, on ne l'a pas enlevée de l'intérieur d'un appartement, endormie avec des frère et sœur plus jeunes, sans que personne ne voie ou n'entende quoi que ce soit et sans aucune preuve forensique, lors d'une fenêtre de seulement 3 minutes entre les contrôles fréquents.

* Gamble dit: Maintenant, avec la police métropolitaine et le niveau de compétence dont ils disposent, et l'expérience de ces enquêtes complexes, ils apportent quelque chose de nouveau à la table ... rassemblant les informations disparates ... et pour la première fois, en les agrégeant de manière à ce que toutes ces informations puissent être questionnées en un seul point. Remarquez d'abord comment Gamble fait écho aux mots identiques utilisés par DCI Andy Redwood pour expliquer pourquoi il pensait qu'il pouvait réussir là où tout le monde avait échoué ... et en plus de cela, il parle des hommes de Redwood apportant 'un nouveau niveau de compétence ... quelque chose de nouveau à la table'. Voilà pour la police portugaise, alors!

* Pourquoi de toutes les personnes Jim Gamble a-t-il été appelé pour faire un «exercice de cadrage»? Qu'est-ce qui le rendait si apte à cela? Cela prouve également à quel point il est proche du cœur même de cette affaire.

* Gamble dit: Je suis content que vous ayez utilisé le mot "éventuellement" pour mettre en place une re-lecture ... le ministre de l'Intérieur l'a eu, et il est regrettable qu'il ait fallu une lettre ouverte de Gerry McCann, à la une d'un journal national, pour inciter David Cameron à le faire. Son amertume envers la ministre de l'Intérieur, Theresa May, pour son licenciement, est claire et nette ici; la décision du ministre de l'Intérieur de le décharger de ses fonctions semble de plus en plus être l'une de ses meilleures décisions. Mais non, M. Gamble, ce n'est pas une lettre ouverte des McCann qui a fait l'affaire, c'est Rebekah Brooks et son équipe de News International qui ont menacé de «mettre Theresa May à la une de tous les journaux du groupe pendant une semaine» qui a forcé Cameron à céder. Nous avons cela sous l'autorité d'au moins cinq sources: deux hauts fonctionnaires, le programme Panorama, l'enquête Leveson et, enfin et surtout, Rebekah Brooks elle-même. Sauf qu'elle a utilisé le mot «persuadée».

L'intervieweur demande (une bonne question): "Est-il inhabituel qu'une personne aussi jeune soit ciblée?" Réponses Gamble: Non, je ne pense pas qu'il soit rare qu'une personne aussi jeune soit ciblée. Au contraire, Gamble sait très bien qu'un enfant de moins de 4 ans enlevé à l'intérieur du domicile d'une personne par un étranger est un événement si rare que personne ne peut même citer un exemple réel largement similaire - en fait, le plus proche que Gamble peut obtenir est une adolescente de 11 ans raptée à un arrêt de bus en plein jour. Les enfants de moins de 4 ans ne sont pas non plus victimes de la traite - consulter un rapport majeur sur la traite des enfants.