Ré-écrire l'affaire MC sans contradictoire

L'association The World Public Library met en ligne tout et rien. Voici ce que l'on trouve à propos de l'affaire MC.

The disappearance of Madeleine McCann occurred on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007, in Praia da Luz, a resort in the Algarve region of Portugal. Madeleine, from the UK, was on holiday with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, her twin siblings, and a group of seven family friends and their five children. She went missing from her bed in the McCanns' holiday apartment nine days before her fourth birthday.

Madeleine and her younger siblings had been left at 20:30 in a bedroom in the ground-floor apartment, while her parents ate with their travelling companions in the resort's tapas restaurant 50 metres (54 yards) away. 
distance à vol d'oiseau entre l'entrée de l'esplanade couverte où les TP9 se trouvaient et les patios des appartements. Les portes d'entrée étaient plus lointaines, situées de l'autre côté de l'immeuble, comme les chambres des enfants, hors d'accès visuel et auditif donc.
The parents or friends checked on the children throughout the evening; Madeleine's mother discovered she was missing at 22:00. The Portuguese police at first assumed she had wandered off or had been abducted, but after misinterpreting a British DNA analysis they came to believe that she had died in the apartment, which placed a cloud of suspicion over her parents.
Le nuage de suspicion n'est pas lié aux résultats des analyses d'ADN, mais aux alertes d'un chien expert en odeur de cadavre qui n'a réagi que dans l'appartement des MC, et non dans ceux de leurs compagnons ni dans celui que les MC ont occupé juste après la disparition, le premier étant devenu la scène du crime.
Quant aux résultats des analyses, dont on espérait qu'elles corroboreraient les alertes de la chienne "sang" (celles du chien "cadavre" ne pouvant l'être), le premier envoyé laissait entendre que l'ADN pouvait provenir de Madeleine, mais sans certitude. Le second rapport n'a manifestement pas voulu prendre de risques et le résultat est non concluant.
The McCanns were named as arguidos (suspects) in September 2007, but were cleared in July 2008 when Portugal's attorney-general closed the case.
C'est un peu vite et donc mal dire. Le procureur a été contraint au non lieu, les protagonistes ayant refusé de procéder à une reconstitution des faits. Le non-lieu a lieu d'être dans la mesure où la nature du crime n'a pu être déterminée. Par ailleurs aucune charge n'a pu être relevée contre les MC, celle de négligence ne tenant pas la route. 
Les MC n'ont pu être "cleared" étant donné qu'ils n'ont jamais été accusés. Et ils n'ont pas été accusés dans la mesure où l'enquête n'a pu déterminer ce qui était arrivé à MMC.  

The parents at first continued the investigation using private detectives,
Les parents ont engagé la première agence de détectives privés au moment où ils sont devenus arguidos, donc alors que l'enquête portugaise était en cours depuis 4 mois.
 but after the intervention of the British Home Secretary in May 2011 Scotland Yard set up Operation Grange, a case review that became a new criminal inquiry. The Portuguese police reopened their own investigation in October 2013, citing new evidence. 
Sans l'accord, semble-t-il du Ministère public et peut-être pour ne pas faire mauvaise figure, le cas échéant, face aux Britanniques, une équipe de la PJ, à Porto, investiguait déjà en 2011.
That month Scotland Yard released e-fit images of men they want to trace, including one of a man seen carrying a child away from the resort that night.
Ces portraits-robots existaient depuis fin 2008 et avaient été obtenus par la seconde agence engagée par les MC, mais ordre avait été donné, via Carter-Ruck donc menaces à l'appui, de ne pas les divulguer. 

The disappearance generated sustained international attention from traditional and social media. Because named as suspects, the McCanns were subjected to intense scrutiny, particularly by the British tabloids, and false allegations of involvement in their daughter's death. 
Personne ne sait si les MC ont quelque chose à voir ou non avec la mort ou non de leur fille. Qualifier de "false" les allegations (elles, bien vraies) est donc un abus de langage.
They and their seven friends were awarded substantial damages against the Express Group in 2008, which they donated to Madeleine's Fund, set up by the parents to finance their search, and front-page apologies from the Daily Express, Daily Star and their Sunday sister papers. The McCanns testified in November 2011 before the Leveson Inquiry into British press standards, lending support to those arguing for tighter press regulation in the UK.

Madeleine McCann

Madeleine Beth McCann (born 12 May 2003 in Leicester, England) lived with her parents and younger twin siblings in Rothley, Leicestershire. She has straight blonde hair, blue-green eyes, and a small brown mark on the calf of her left leg. In 2009 the McCanns released several age-progressed images of how she may have looked at age six, and Scotland Yard released another in 2012 of her at age nine.

Madeleine's right eye has a distinctive dark strip on the iris, possibly a coloboma. Photographs showing the mark became some of the most widely distributed images of the decade; close-up shots were placed in shop windows around the UK and campaign posters used the word "look" with the first "o" containing the mark. Police in Portugal opposed highlighting the mark, fearing that to do so would place Madeleine in danger.

McCanns, Tapas Seven

Kate Marie McCann (née Healy, born 1968 in Allerton, Liverpool) graduated in 1992 with a degree in medicine from the University of Dundee, and practised gynaecology before moving into general practice. Gerald Patrick McCann (born 1968 in Glasgow) is a consultant cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital, Leicester. He attended Holyrood Secondary School and studied medicine at the University of Glasgow, qualifying in 1992 and obtaining his MD in 2002. The couple met in 1993 in Glasgow and were married in 1998. Both are practising Roman Catholics.

The McCanns were on holiday with a group of friends from the UK and eight children in all, including the McCanns' three.  The group consisted of physician Russell O'Brien and his partner Jane Tanner, a marketing manager; lawyer Rachael Oldfield and her husband, physician Matthew Oldfield; and spouses David and Fiona Payne, both physicians, as well as the latter's mother, Dianne Webster. The nine adults met up every evening during the holiday at 20:30 in the resort's tapas restaurant, as a result of which the media dubbed the friends the Tapas Seven.

Apartement G5A 

The apartment the McCanns were staying in, 5A, was on the ground floor of the fifth block of Waterside Village Gardens, Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva. The apartment block lay on the perimeter of the Ocean Club resort, run by the holiday company Mark Warner Ltd, with many of the privately owned apartments rented by the company for its guests.
L'immeuble se situe hors de l'enceinte de l'OC. Ce qui vient après est faux. Entre les patios de l'immeuble et le haut mur de l'enceinte "Tapas", il y a une large allée publique.
The back of the block overlooked the Ocean Club, while the side and front overlooked two streets. The McCann's two-bedroom apartment sat on a corner and was accessible to the public from all sides. The front door, which lay on the non-resort north side, led to a small walled car park and the street. Sliding patio doors at the south back faced the Ocean Club, and could be accessed from a short set of steps and a gate on the side of the block leading from Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins. The three children slept in a bedroom on the non-resort north side; the bedroom had one shuttered window that overlooked the car park. The twins slept in travel cots in the middle of the bedroom, while Madeleine was in a single bed on the opposite side of the room from the window.

Thursday, May 3rd 

Thursday, 3 May, was the sixth day of the family's week-long holiday. The children spent the morning in the resort's Kids' Club while the parents went for a walk,
Ils ont joué au tennis. Pas de promenade.
then the family lunched together at their apartment before heading to the pool. Kate took the last known photograph of Madeleine by the pool that afternoon, sitting next to her father and two-year-old sister. The children returned to Kids' Club, and at 18:00 Kate took them back to the apartment while Gerry went for a tennis lesson.
Pas une leçon, un double-messieurs. 

The McCanns put the children to bed around 19:00. Madeleine was left asleep in the single bed, with her princess blanket and a pink soft toy, Cuddle Cat. She was wearing a pair of short-sleeved, pink-and-white Marks and Spencer's Eeyore pyjamas. The parents left the apartment at 20:30 to dine with their friends at the resort's open-air tapas restaurant,
Pas "open-air", mais couvert par une bâche semi-transparente, en PVC.
50 metres (160 ft) on the other side of the pool, a walk of 30–45 seconds.
Ce temps (qui ne semble pas prendre en compte le fait qu'il faut ouvrir et fermer deux portes pour sortir de l'enceinte "Tapas", ouvrir la grille du patio et ouvrir la barrière de protection en haut de l'escalier) ne vaut que pour qui laisse la porte du patio ouverte (on ne peut la fermer et l'ouvrir que de l'intérieur). Aucun des compagnons de voyage des MC n'a fait ce choix et, selon le témoignage de Fiona WP, les MC ont innové le soir du 3 mai en laissant cette porte ouverte.
They left the apartment's sliding patio doors closed, but not locked.
"Closed" est un euphémisme, la porte devant être ouverte de quelques centimètres pour glisser la paume dans cette ouverture et pousser la porte coulissante. 

The staff at the tapas restaurant had left a note in a staff message book asking that the same table, which overlooked the apartments, be block-booked for 20:30 for the McCanns and their friends that evening and several evenings before it. The message said the children were asleep in the apartments; the abductor may have seen this note in the staff book, which was left at the swimming-pool reception area.
Le registre des réservations est dans les PJFiles, mais un tel "message" n'y figure pas.
The McCanns and their friends left the table throughout the evening to check on their children. At around 21:05 Gerry entered 5A to carry out the first check. All was well, except that he recalled having left the bedroom door only slightly ajar and now it stood almost wide open; he said he pulled it back to a five-degree position before returning to the restaurant. The McCanns believe the movement of the door may mean that the abductor had been in the apartment.
Ce détail, associé au signalement fait par Jane TB d'un porteur d'enfant (Tannerman) aperçu vers 21h15, alors qu'elle passait à côté de Gerald MC en train de bavarder avec Jeremy W, devant la grille du patio, semblait indiquer que Tannerman était entré dans l'appartement avant GMC, s'était caché en entendant celui-ci entré et était sorti du côté parking avec MMC dès le départ de GMC par le côté patio. Mais, en 2013, OG a éliminé Tannerman de la liste des suspects, il n'était qu'un père ramenant son enfant de la crèche de nuit, donc Crecheman. Depuis personne n'a jugé utile d'expliquer la porte trouvée "trop ouverte".

Possible sightings of the abductor

Tanner report

Tombé en désuétude en octobre 2013
One of the McCanns' travelling companions, Jane Tanner, left the restaurant to check on her own daughter. She passed Gerry on Rua Dr Gentil Martins on his way back to the restaurant from his 21:05 check; he was standing in the street chatting to a television producer he had met at the resort. At around 21:15 

Alors qu'elle venait de dépasser GMC et JW, 

Tanner noticed a man cross the road in front of her, heading out of the resort along Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, the road the McCanns' apartment was on.

She said he was carrying a barefoot child who was wearing light-coloured pink pyjamas with a floral pattern and cuffs on the legs. She described the man as white, dark-haired, 1.70 m (5 ft 7 in) tall, of southern European or Mediterranean appearance, 35–40 years old, wearing gold or beige trousers and a dark jacket, and said he did not look like a tourist. Tanner passed the information to the Portuguese police, although the description was not given to the media until 25 May. Madeleine's Fund arranged for an FBI-accredited forensic artist to create an image of the man, which was released to the public in October 2007. Although Tanner had not seen the man's face, the sighting became important because it offered investigators a time frame for the abduction.
A time frame ou une dis-traction ? Le portrait-robot n'en était pas un puisque le visage était une forme ovale vide (d'où Eggman), il ne servait à rien, ses vêtements ayant été décrits des mois plus tôt.
Remarquer l'abus de langage : on admettrait "for an abduction", mais non "for the abduction", celle-ci n'ayant jamais eu que ce Tannerman comme indice. Indice donc aujourd'hui révolu.

Scotland Yard came to believe that this sighting was a red herring. In October 2013 they said a British holidaymaker had come forward to say he believed he was the man Tanner had seen, and that he had been returning to his apartment after picking his own daughter up from the Ocean Club night creche. Police took photographs of the man wearing the same or similar clothes to the ones he was wearing on the night, and standing in a pose similar to the one Tanner reported. The man also showed detectives the pyjamas his daughter had been wearing, and they matched the description given by Tanner. DCI Redwood said his officers were "almost certain now that this sighting is not the abductor.

Smith report

The Tanner sighting suggested Madeleine had been taken around 21:15. In 2008 private detectives with Oakley International, a company hired by Madeleine's Fund, questioned the consistency of the Tanner report and became more interested in a second sighting. This took place at around 22:00 and was reported to Portuguese police by Martin and Mary Smith, who were on holiday from Ireland.

The Smiths and their family saw the man on Rua da Escola Primária, around 500 yards (457 m) from the McCanns' apartment, carrying a young girl and walking from the direction of the Ocean Club resort towards Rua 25 de Abril and the beach. Il serait plus juste de dire qu'il marchait vers le sud, personne ne sait ce qu'il a fait, une fois dans la rue 25 de Abril qui est parallèle à l'océan. They described the girl as 3–4 years old, wearing light-coloured pyjamas (un vêtement léger qui pourrait être un pyjama), with medium blonde hair and pale skin. They said the man was mid-30s, 1.75–1.80 m (5 ft 7 in – 5 ft 9 in) in height, with a slim-to-normal build, short brown hair, wearing cream or beige trousers. They said he did not look like a tourist, a point Tanner made about the man she saw, and that he had not looked comfortable carrying the child.
On veut voir dans cette remarque "not looked comfortable carrying" un indice que l'homme n'était pas le père de l'enfant. Mais aucun des S n'a mis cela en doute. Et il y a une autre explication que le manque d'entraînement.

Oakley International prepared e-fit images in 2008 – one based on Martin's description and the other on Mary'^s –
Aucune information, aucun indice ne permet d'affirmer cela. Il est du reste probable qu'il n'en soit rien, car MS a 1) clairement déclaré à la presse qu'il ne donnerait aucun interview, et il remarquablement tenu parole et 2) rapporté qu'il avait été sollicité par la première agence des MC pour l'exécution d'un portrait-robot et qu'il avait refusé.
Par ailleurs comme il a plus tard déclaré devant les Gardaï qu'il était possible que Smithman fût Gerald MC, il serait étonnant qu'il se prête à une opération où l'objectivité serait d'emblée difficile à préserver.
but for various reasons the images were not released to the public at the time. When Scotland Yard became involved in 2011 and ruled out the Tanner sighting, after the British tourist stepped forward to say it was probably him, they came to believe that it was the Smith sighting that gave them the approximate time of Madeleine's kidnap, and on 13 October 2013 they released the Oakley International e-fits.

Madeleine reported missing

Kate had intended to check on the children at 21:30, but Matthew Oldfield offered to do it when he checked on his own children in the apartment next door. He noticed that the McCanns' children's bedroom door was open, but after hearing no noise he left their apartment without seeing Madeleine. 
Un peu ambigu.. Matthew n'est pas entré dans la chambre, il a regardé de loin et ne pouvait voir si MMC était là ou non. Toutefois il a dû voir l'autre lit, devant la fenêtre, très défait. Pourquoi n'a-t-il pas songé que c'était le lit de Madeleine et ne s'est pas demandé où elle était ?
He could not recall whether the bedroom window had been open. Early on in the investigation the Portuguese police accused him of being involved because he had volunteered to do the check instead of Kate.
Matthew n'a jamais été accusé de quoi que ce soit. Il a été interrogé (les autres ont fait une déposition "ouverte") parce qu'il était la dernière personne présente dans l'appartement avant la découverte de la disparition. 
La déposition de Matthew fait douter de sa présence dans l'appartement : la chambre qu'il décrit ne ressemble pas à celle des enfants MC et de là où il était il ne pouvait voir qu'un des jumeaux.

Kate went to check at around 22:00. Scotland Yard believe that Madeleine was taken just moments before this. She recalled entering the apartment through the patio doors at the back, and noticed that the children's bedroom door was wide open. When she tried to close it a little, it slammed shut, suggesting there was a draught from an open window. She opened the door and saw that the bedroom window and its shutter were open; Gerry later discovered that the shutter could be opened from outside.
Première chose après la constatation de la disparition, Gerald s'est livré à une expérience qui n'a trompé que ceux qui ignorent comment fonctionne ce type de volet. On peut soulever un peu de l'extérieur, mais on n'enroule pas et le volet retombe brutalement dès qu'on le lâche. Toutefois Gerald a réussi à modifier la scène du crime irréparablement...
Madeleine's Cuddle Cat and princess blanket were still on the bed, but Madeleine was gone. After briefly searching the apartment Kate ran back towards the restaurant, screaming that someone had taken Madeleine.

At around 22:10 Gerry sent Matthew Oldfield to alert the resort's 24-hour reception desk and to call the police,
Fiona dit que c'est elle qui a demandé à Matthew et Matthew dit que c'est Fiona qui lui a demandé d'aller à la réception principale où du reste le réceptionniste n'a aucun souvenir de lui.
and at 22:30 the resort activated its missing-child search protocol.
Dès 22h20 ce protocole a été mis sur pied. La police a été appelée à 22h41 par le réceptionniste parce que le manager de l'OC, John H, le lui a demandé.
The resort's manager said that 60 staff and guests searched until 04:30, at first assuming that Madeleine had wandered off. 
Les gendarmes ont cherché plus longtemps avec des maîtres-chiens. Une voiture de patrouille de la GNR est restée sur place jusqu'à la relève vers 8h. 
 One of them told Channel 4's Dispatches that from one end of Luz to the other, you could hear people shouting her name.

Portuguese investigation (2007-2008) 

Early response

There were strained relations between the McCanns and the Portuguese police from early on in the search.
Les relations n'ont commencé à se tendre que début août, après l'alerte du chien "cadavre".
Criminal investigations in Portugal usually operate in secrecy, with no press conferences and no release of suspects' or witnesses' names. A senior officer acknowledged in 2010 that the police had been suspicious of the McCanns from the start, because they ignored a request not to talk about the disappearance and turned the inquiry into what the officer called a "media circus."
Il est sûr que les policiers portugais n'ont pas vu d'un bon oeil une intrusion médiatique invraisemblable, car elle les dérangeait dans leur travail. Mais le senior officer, sûrement Gonçalo Amaral, peut dire qu'il a soupçonné dès le début, c'est sa parole rétrospective contre ses actes et ses paroles d'alors...
The McCanns, for their part, feared that the investigation was not thorough or fast enough. 
Dans toutes les affaires criminelles, et surtout lorsque quelqu'un a disparu, a fortiori lorsque c'est un enfant, les proches trouvent que rien n'avance assez vite. On les comprend, mais les médias se gardent de se servir de ce sentiment de frustration pour insulter la police et l'accuser d'incompétence, ce qui s'est passé, honteusement, dans l'affaire MC. Force est de dire que les MC n'ont rien fait pour protéger des tabloïds britanniques une police étrangère qui avait pour précieuse mission de retrouver leur fille.  
According to the police, officers arrived at the apartment within 10 minutes of being alerted and an investigation unit began work within 30 minutes.
Malheureusement pour les détracteurs de la police portugaise, l'heure de l'appel à la gendarmerie de Lagos a été enregistré, 22h41, soit environ 45 minutes après le constat de la disparition. Tous les protagonistes avaient des téléphones cellulaires... et le numéro européen de secours fonctionnait au Portugal...
According to Kate McCann, two officers from the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR) arrived at 23:10 from Lagos,
La patrouille est arrivée à PDL à 23h, soit 20 minutes après l'appel. Les deux gendarmes étaient à plus de 30 km de PDL quand le poste de Lagos les a contactés.
a town five miles away, and at midnight alerted the Polícia Judiciária, the criminal police, who she said arrived at 1 am from Portimão, 20 miles away.
Le commandant de la GNR, alerté par un gendarme sur le fait que le père répétait qu'il s'agissait d'un enlèvement, est venu sur place après avoir fait contacter la PJ de Portimão.
Two patrol dogs were brought to the resort at 2 am and four search-and-rescue dogs at 8 am.
Ces chiens de sauvetage ont été réquisitionnés au milieu de la nuit auprès de l'école de la gendarmerie de Queluz (Lisbonne). 

The crime scene was not secured. 
On a vu que Gerald avait modifié un élément-clef de la thèse de l'enlèvement, les MC n'ont empêché personne d'entrer et de sortir de l'appartement avant l'arrivée de la police. Donc, oui, la scène du crime n'a pas été immédiatement préservée, mais, non, la scène du crime n'était pas vierge lorsque les premiers gendarmes sont arrivés.
Kate wrote that an officer placed tape across the doorway of the children's bedroom but left at 3 am without securing the rest of the apartment. Chief Inspector Olegário de Sousa of the Polícia Judiciária, who worked on the case, said that around 20 people entered the apartment before it was closed off. Madeleine's toy, Cuddle Cat, was not secured or checked early on for DNA.
Kate s'accrochait à cette peluche... Qui aurait eu le courage de la lui enlever ?
Neither border nor marine police were given descriptions of Madeleine for many hours, and officers did not appear cette insinuation est gratuite to make extensive door-to-door inquiries.
Il n'y a pas de frontière entre l'Espagne et le Portugal, tous deux dans l'espace Schengen. L'aéroport de Faro était fermé, mais les polices de terre, de l'air et de mer ont été alertées. Dès le lendemain plusieurs équipes ont procédé à environ 500 enquêtes de voisinnage.
They also failed to request surveillance pictures of vehicles leaving Praia da Luz that night, or of the road between Lagos and Vila Real de Santo António on the Spanish border.
C'est faux, toutes les stations service et pompes à essence dotées de caméras ont été sollicitées.
There was nevertheless condescendance !!! a significant effort to find Madeleine, with officers having their leave cancelled and working through weekends.

Friends of the McCanns' friends in the UK alerted the media as soon as they heard Madeleine was missing. Gerry's sister in Scotland informed the British Consulate in the Algarve, the British Embassy in Lisbon and the Foreign Office in London. Roadblocks were put in place at 10 am the next morning. Interpol issued a global alert known as a yellow notice five days later. Local police organized searches of waterways, wells, caves, sewers and ruins.

Gonçalo Amaral

Another source of scrutiny of the Portuguese police was the behaviour of the officer in charge of the inquiry from May until October 2007, Inspector Gonçalo Amaral, head of the regional Polícia Judiciária in Portimão. A month after the disappearance, Amaral and four other officers were charged with offences related to an earlier inquiry into the disappearance of Joana Cipriano, an eight-year-old Portuguese girl missing since 2004 from Figueira, seven miles (11 km) from Praia da Luz. The police assumed she had been murdered, although her body was never found. The girl's mother and uncle were convicted of murder after confessing; the mother later retracted her confession, saying she had been beaten by police. Amaral was not present when the beating allegedly took place, but was accused of covering up for others.
Cette affaire a été sur-exploitée par les supporters des MC qui ont voulu y voir la preuve de la corruption de GA, bien qu'il n'y ait vraiment aucun point commun entre les MC et la très pauvre famille Cipriano. C'est un tribunal qui a mis en prison la mère et l'oncle (frère incestueux d'icelle) de la petite Joana, pas GA.

In October 2007, after Amaral told a Portuguese newspaper that the British police were only pursuing leads helpful to the McCanns, he was removed from Madeleine's case and transferred to another position in Faro. He resigned instead, and wrote a book alleging that Madeleine had died in the apartment and that the McCanns had fabricated the abduction scenario. He was convicted of perjury in May 2009 for having falsified documents in the Cipriano case, and received an 18-month suspended sentence.
Il a seulement signé un document défendant les policiers accusés d'avoir maltraité la mère de Joana.
The McCanns sued him for defamation, a lawsuit that was ongoing as of November 2013.
Toujours ongoing en août 2016, mais entretemps les MC ont gagné en première instance (les enfants MC ont perdu), GA a fait appel et a gagné et les MC se sont pourvus en cassation.

The PR firm Bell Pottinger, representing Mark Warner Ltd, sent Alex Woolfall to deal with the media for the first ten days, then the British government, under Tony Blair, sent in government press officers. The first was Sheree Dodd, a former Daily Mirror journalist, then Clarence Mitchell, who left the BBC in 2005 to become director of media monitoring for the government's Central Office of Information. When the government withdrew Mitchell, a non-government PR representative, Justine McGuinness, took over until September 2007, then another PR company, Hanover, was briefly involved. Mitchell resigned his government position that month and returned to Portugal, when a benefactor, Brian Kennedy of Everest Windows, stepped in to cover his salary; this was later paid by Madeleine's Fund. As of 2014 Mitchell was still the McCanns' part-time spokesperson.

Photographs of Madeleine quickly became some of the most reproduced images of the decade. She appeared on the cover of People magazine on 28 May 2007, and on 30 May the McCanns' PR team arranged for the couple and a group of journalists to fly to Rome, in a Learjet belonging to British businessman Sir Philip Green, to meet Pope Benedict XVI. Placing Madeleine on the front page of a newspaper in the UK would sell up to 30,000 extra copies; she was on the front page of several British tabloids every day for almost six months, and became one of Sky News's three main menu options at UK news, world news, Madeleine. The Portuguese tabloid Correio da Manha published 384 articles about her between May 2007 and July 2008. By June 2008 over seven million posts and 3,700 videos were returned in a search for her name on YouTube.

The PR approach set the tone for poor relations between the McCanns and the Policia Judiciaria, who were deeply suspicious of the way their investigation was being dominated, as they saw it, by British media handlers. One officer said: “The British press ... treats Portugal as a place full of incapable, careless incompetents.” The bad feeling reached such a height that the Policia Judiciaria officer who coordinated the investigation from May to October 2007, Chief Inspector Goncalo Amaral, resigned in June 2008 to write a book alleging that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment, and that the McCanns had faked the abduction.”

First arguidos 

The first person to be given arguido (suspect) status in the case was a local man, Robert Murat, a British-Portuguese property consultant; arguido status gives people additional rights, such as the right to remain silent. 
Le statut d'arguido est très semblable à celui de témoin assisté, il exige la présence d'un avocat, l'arguido devant être protégé du risque d'auto-incrimination.
Murat was made arguido on 15 May 2007, 12 days after the disappearance, after coming to the attention of Lori Campbell,
Cette journaleuse, rêvant peut-être de débusquer le coupable, a tout simplement trouvé que RM ressemblait au meurtrier de Soham. RM avait une compétence qui irritait particulièrement les envoyés des tabloïds : il était parfaitement bilingue.
a Sunday Mirror journalist, when he offered to translate witness statements for the police; he said his interest in the case stemmed from his loss of custody of his own three-year-old daughter. Three members of the Tapas Seven said they had seen Murat in the resort on the evening Madeleine disappeared, although he and his mother said he had been at home.
Pas seulement, des connaissances qui se trouvaient dans les parages, à la recherche de MMC, ne l'ont pas vu. Les gendarmes, sur photo, ne l'ont pas reconnu (pourtant les TP3 disaient qu'ils avaient vu RM parler à la GNR), etc. 

Murat's home was searched, his cars, computers, mobile phones and video tapes were examined, and two of his associates were questioned. There was nothing to link him to the disappearance, and he was cleared on 21 July 2008 when the case closed. As with the McCanns, Murat found himself at the centre of media allegations. He and his two associates sued 11 newspapers for libel in relation to 100 articles published by Associated Newspapers, Express Newspapers, Mirror Group Newspapers, and News Group Newspapers (News International). According to The Observer, it was the largest number of separate libel actions brought in the UK by the same person in relation to one issue. Murat was awarded £600,000 in July 2008 and the others $100,000; all three received public apologies. The British Sky Broadcasting Group, which owns Sky News, paid Murat undisclosed damages in a separate libel action in November 2008, and agreed that Sky News should host an apology to him on its website for 12 months.

McCanns as arguidos

British sniffer dogs

Matt Baggott, chief constable of Leicestershire police when Madeleine disappeared, told the Leveson Inquiry in 2012 that Leicestershire police were asked on 8 May 2007 to co-ordinate the British response on behalf of the British government and the Association of Chief Police Officers. They laid down that it was a Portuguese-led inquiry, and that British police would comply with Portuguese law and its Judicial Secrecy Act. It was this decision that tied the hands of British police when the police in Portugal began briefing reporters against the McCanns.
Où l'on voit que le pays leader en matière de tourisme de la diffamation prend ses aises chaque fois que se présente l'opportunité de diffamer ailleurs. On aimerait quelques faits à l'appui d'une rumeur qui s'est répandue avec autant de succès que la première, celle du volet et de la fenêtre fracturés, une rumeur qui a mis le feu aux poudres et a monopolisé l'attention de la planète. Rumeur ou hoax ? Ni le volet et la fenêtre n'ont été fracturés. Qui a dit qu'ils l'étaient ? Gerald MC exclusivement. À qui ? À sa famille, à ses proches, au téléphone. Non, ils n'ont pas communiqué entre eux, non ils n'ont pas inventé, ils sont 5 ou 6 à avoir reçu indépendamment un appel de Gerald décrivant une effraction.  Mais à la police, Gerald MC n'a pas osé raconter des sornettes, il s'est contenté de dire qu'ils avaient trouvé ouverts le volet et la fenêtre. Toutefois ils sont les seuls à avoir vu cela et les experts de la police scientifique n'ont détecté aucune trace de passage. Par ailleurs, pourquoi passer par la fenêtre si la porte est ouverte ? La seule question qui se pose est la suivante : pourquoi les MC ont-ils prétendu que le volet et la fenêtre étaient ouverts ? 

Experts from the British Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre arrived in Portugal on 9 May to help develop a psychological profile of a possible abductor. In July British police arrived to help with a ground search, bringing equipment for underground detection, ultraviolet instruments and two Springer spaniel sniffer dogs, Keela and Eddie. Keela was a crime-scene dog trained to alert her handler, Martin Grimes, to traces of human blood, even if the area had been cleaned or the blood was decades old. Eddie was an enhanced victim recovery dog (EVRD), who alerted to the scent of human cadavers.

In late July the dogs were taken to several apartments and areas connected to the investigation. Both dogs gave alerts at several spots in the apartment from which Madeleine had disappeared, including behind the sofa. On 2 August Portuguese police arrived at the house the McCanns had recently rented and removed Madeleine's Cuddle Cat and the couple's clothes; they also took diaries Kate had started after the disappearance and a Bible she had borrowed, also after the disappearance. Kate wrote in 2011 that the police would only say that an "anomaly" had arisen. On 6 August the police impounded a Renault Scenic the couple had hired 24 days after the disappearance. The cadaver dog gave an alert outside the car and inside the boot
Le chien "cadavre" n'est pas entré dans le véhicule. Il a uniquement alerté à la porte du conducteur. Dans le compartiment intérieur de cette porte se trouvait la carte de démarrage du véhicule. Cette carte fut ensuite mise dans un bac à sable, en hauteur. Le chien a alerté près du bac à sable.
; one or both dogs gave alerts at Cuddle Cat, Kate's clothes and the Bible.
Faux. 

British DNA analysis

Material, including hair and other fibres, was collected from the areas in the apartment and car that the dogs had reacted to, and was sent to the Forensic Science Service (FSS) in Birmingham for DNA profiling. The FSS used a technique known as low copy number (LCN) DNA analysis, which they had developed in 1999. LCN DNA is used when only a few cells are available for testing; the test is controversial because it is more sensitive than other techniques, and therefore more vulnerable to contamination and misinterpretation. On 3 September 2007 John Lowe of the FSS emailed Detective Superintendent Stuart Prior of the Leicestershire police to say that a sample from the boot of the car contained 15 out of 19 of Madeleine's DNA components. He wrote that the result was "too complex for meaningful interpretation": 

A complex LCN [low copy number] DNA result which appeared to have originated from at least three people was obtained from cellular material recovered from the luggage compartment section ... Within the DNA profile of Madeleine McCann there are 20 DNA components represented by 19 peaks on a chart. ... Of these 19 components 15 are present within the result from this item; there are 37 components in total. There are 37 components because there are at least 3 contributors; but there could be up to five contributors. In my opinion therefore this result is too complex for meaningful interpretation/inclusion.

The email was translated into Portuguese on 4 September. Portuguese police nevertheless told Gerry McCann on 7 September that Madeleine's DNA had been found in the boot of the car and behind the sofa in the apartment. Both Kate and Gerry were named as suspects that day.

Journalists in Portugal were told that the DNA evidence was a "100 percent match."
Il y a eu un lost in translation ici. Personne n'a jamais dit cela. Les Portuguais acceptent comme une forte présomption la présence de 15 sur 19 marqueurs. 
A British tabloid published the front-page headline, "Brit Lab Bombshell: Car DNA is 100% Maddie's," while another reported that "a clump of Maddie's hair" had been found in the car. Jerry Lawton, a reporter with the Daily Star, a British tabloid, told the Leveson Inquiry in 2012 that the leaks came directly from the Portuguese police, and caused a "sea change" in the way the case was viewed by the media.
Aucune preuve n'a été apportée à l'appui de ces propos. Tout journaliste est censé recouper ses informations. M. Lawton, dans sa hâte de faire un scoop, a commis une bévue. Et les absents (dans les auditions Leveson) ont toujours tort, comme chacun sait.
 Chief Constable Matt Baggott told the inquiry that it was this misinterpretation of the DNA evidence by the Portuguese police that led them to conclude that the McCanns had faked an abduction to cover up Madeleine's death. Baggott knew that the DNA evidence was being wrongly interpreted, but because the Portuguese were in charge of the inquiry, he did not correct reporters who were being briefed by Portuguese police that the McCanns were involved.
M. Baggott aurait dû lire le rapport de Lee Rainbow, daté de juin, donc trois mois avant l'arrivée du premier résultat des FSS, il aurait vu pourquoi ce top profiler du NPIA recommandait aux Portugais de scruter la piste MC autant que la piste ravisseur. Il aurait aussi dû "Madeleine", il aurait vu que trois semaines avant la "fausse interprétation du l'ADN", le directeur de la PJ pour l'Algarve (donc le supérieur direct de GA) et le chef de la Brigade anti-crime avaient clairement dit aux MC qu'ils ne croyaient pas en leur histoire et que la prochaine rencontre serait un interrogatoire.

McCanns return to the UK

On 5 September 2007, according to Kate, the Polícia Judiciária proposed that, if she were to admit that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment and that she had hidden the body, she might only serve a two-year sentence; Gerry would not be charged and would be free to leave.
Les propositions, les offres n'existent que dans la Common Law. Kate MC n'a donc (au mieux) pas compris. Les policiers pourraient lui avoir dit que le recel de cadavre était puni d'une amende, car telle est la loi portugaise, mais en aucun cas par une peine de prison, car il ne s'agit pas d'un crime, mais d'un délit. D'ailleurs son propre avocat a réfuté, dans The Guardian deux jours plus tard, qu'une réduction de peine ait été faite, ce qui, étonnant ou non, n'a pas empêché KMC d'écrire dans "Madeleine", trois ans après, qu'un plea-bargain avait été insinué.
She was interviewed formally by the Polícia Judiciáriaon 7 September but declined to answer any questions. Despite their arguido status, the McCanns were allowed to leave Portugal and arrived back in England on 9 September. The following day Tavares de Almeida, the chief inspector in Portimao, signed a police report concluding that Madeleine had died in apartment 5A as a result of an accident, and that the McCanns had concealed the body and faked an abduction. On 11 September the 10-volume case file was passed to the appointed judge, Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias, who authorized the seizure of Kate's diary and Gerry's laptop, thought to be at the McCanns' home in England.
Le diary et le laptop avaient été saisis, puis restitués, début août. 

In October 2007 Gonçalo Amaral, the officer in charge of the inquiry in Portugal, was removed from his post after telling a newspaper that the British police only pursued leads if they were helpful to the McCanns. He was replaced by Paulo Rebelo, deputy national director of the Policia Judiciaria, based in Portimao. The team of detectives was expanded and a full case review began.

To rebut allegations that Kate or the twins had been on medication at the time of the disappearance – one of the many allegations against the McCanns was that Kate was on anti-depressants and that the couple had been sedating the children – their hair was tested in November 2007; no traces were found.
Un tel test, plus de 4 mois plus tard, est inutile car il ne peut rien prouver.
On 29 November four members of the Portuguese investigation – reportedly including Francisco Corte-Real, vice-president of Portugal's forensic crime service – were briefed at Leicestershire police headquarters by the Forensic Science Service. The British scientists reiterated that the DNA analysis had been inconclusive.

Investigation closed 

The Tapas Seven were interviewed by Leicestershire police in England in April 2008, with the Policia Judiciária in attendance. The Portuguese police planned the following month to hold a reconstruction of the disappearance,
Cette reconstitution avait été annoncée en février. Les TP7 devaient choisir entre trois dates de mai 2008.
 but it was cancelled when the friends declined to participate.
 Avant de refuser de participer à une reconstitution, les TP7 et les MC savaient que si un seul protagoniste était absent, la reconstitution ne s'effectuerait pas.
 Another indication of the poor relationship between the McCanns and the police came that month when, on the day the McCanns were at the European Parliament in Brussels to promote a monitoring system for missing children, transcripts of their interviews with Portuguese police were leaked to Spanish television.
Rien ne prouve que l'épisode des larmes, car c'est ce détail qui a été révélé dans une émission espagnole, a fuité de la police portugaise. Plusieurs officiers de liaison britanniques et les TP7 le connaissaient, entre autres.

The national director of the Policia Judiciária, Alípio Ribeiro, resigned in May 2008, citing media pressure from the investigation; he had publicly said the police had been hasty in naming the McCanns as suspects.
Si on pense que Kate MC a profité de son statut d'arguida pour maintenir le silence, on ne peut que se demander, comme AR, s'il n'y avait pas une autre manière (légale) de faire.
A judgment from the Evora Supreme Court of Justice in Portimao, released on 29 May 2008, revealed that Portuguese investigators were examining several charges, including abandonment of a child, abduction, homicide, and concealment of a corpse. Two months later, on 21 July 2008, the Portuguese Attorney General announced that the McCanns' and Robert Murat's arguido status had been lifted, and that the case was closed. On 4 August the police released 11,233 pages on CD-Rom to the media, which they said was the entire case file.

Just after the case was closed in July, excerpts from Kate's diary, which she had handed to the Policia Judiciária in August 2007 for the sniffer dogs,
"handed for the sniffer dogs" ? Quelle histoire !!!
were published without her permission by a newspaper in Portugal, translated from English to Portuguese. 
Si cela est vrai (l'absence de permission), pourquoi les MC, qui n'ont pas hésité à traduire en justice le groupe de presse Express, n'ont-ils pas poursuivi le journal ?
This despite an earlier ruling by a Portuguese judge that the seizure had been a privacy violation and that any copies must be destroyed. On 14 September one of the News International tabloids in the UK, The News of the World, also published them, again without permission and now translated poorly back into English.
"Poorly", peut-être, mais il ne s'agit pas d'une oeuvre littéraire et Kate MC n'a pas dénoncé de lost in translation.

Gonçalo Amaral book 

Just as the McCanns were cleared by the Portuguese attorney general in July 2008, Gonçalo Amaral, the officer in charge of the Portuguese investigation from May to October 2007, published a book, Maddie, a Verdade da Mentira ("Maddie, the Truth of the Lie"), which by November that year had sold 180,000 copies. It alleged that Madeleine had died in the apartment and that the McCanns had invented the abduction scenario.
On ne trouve pas une telle allégation dans le livre de GA (qui a dû être relu par des avocats pour éviter des impairs). Oui, l'ex-inspecteur pense que MMC est morte accidentellement dans l'appartement, quant au reste il spécule et le dit clairement.
 The McCanns sued for libel and in September 2009 a Portuguese judge issued an injunction against further publication or sales, banned Amaral from repeating his claims, and passed the copyright of the book, and of a film that accompanied it, to the McCanns' lawyer. The McCanns also sought 1.2 million euros in damages. In December 2009 Amaral responded to the publication ban by publishing a second book, A Mordaça Inglesa ("The English Gag"). In October 2010 the Court of Appeal in Lisbon overturned the ban, stating that it violated Amaral's freedom of expression. Hearings in the libel action began on 12 September 2013 in Lisbon and were continuing as of November. The McCanns are suing Amaral and his publishers, Guerra & Paz, as well as filmmakers VC Filmes, and TVI, a Portuguese television station.

Madeleine's Fund

Publicity, rewards

Media analyst Nicola Rehling writes that the "Maddification" of Britain was complete within weeks of the disappearance, similar to its "Dianafication" in 1997 following the death of the Princess of Wales. The McCanns decided early on to interact with the media to keep Madeleine in the public eye, fearing she would otherwise be forgotten. Owen Jones argues that the result was something approaching mass hysteria, "the most extraordinary outpouring of media interest over such a case in modern times."

The McCanns were flown to Rome three weeks after the disappearance, accompanied by a group of reporters, in a Learjet belonging to British businessman Sir Philip Green to meet Pope Benedict XVI, who blessed a photograph of Madeleine. Several photographs of her, particularly the iconic image of the mark on her right eye, became some of the most reproduced images of the decade. She appeared on the cover of People magazine on 28 May 2007, was on the front page of several British tabloids every day for almost six months – placing her on the front page would sell up to 30,000 extra copies – and Sky News had her as one of its three main menu options: UK news, world news, Madeleine. By June 2008 over seven million posts and 3,700 videos were returned in a search for her name on YouTube. In 2009 Oprah Winfrey interviewed the McCanns to publicize an age-progressed image of Madeleine at age six, and the following year British poet Simon Armitage wrote a poem to mark the 1,000th day of her disappearance.

On 16 May 2007 the family set up a limited company to finance the search, Madeleine's Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned, known in the media as "Team McCann. The Fund was criticized for making two of the McCanns' mortgage payments early on when they were unable to work;
Rien n'empêchait GMC de retourner au RU plus tôt (KMC ne travaillait même pas à mi-temps). Les MC ont vécu plus de 4 mois au Portugal aux frais de MW, puis de Madeleine's Fund.
when the couple were made arguidos, the Fund's directors decided that donations would not be used to cover legal costs or the mortgage.  Appeals were solicited from political leaders and celebrities, including at the 2007 FA Cup Final. Over £2.6 million was raised, with donations from J.K. Rowling and Richard Branson, and a reward of £1.5 million from the News of the World. 
Beaucoup d'enfants et de "petites gens" ont envoyé de l'argent.

Private investigation

Overview

The search for Madeleine was coordinated by Brian Kennedy, the owner of Everest Windows, who stepped forward in août/septembre 2007 to help the McCanns financially.
Pas seulement financièrement, il s'est lancé lui-même in the hunt for Madeleine, il a dépêché son bras droit et avocat, il a discuté avec la police portugaise, etc.
 As well as helping to pay for the search, he paid for the salary of Clarence Mitchell, director of the Central Office of Information's media monitoring unit, who became the McCann's spokesperson. The Fund hired at least five firms of private investigators. A British firm, Control Risks, was hired at the end of May 2007.
Une dizaine de jours après la disparition, probablement à l'instigation de Mark Warner qui a payé. Comment, pourquoi et quand cette firme a été remerciée est un mystère.
Kennedy engaged Spanish agency Método 3 for six months for £50,000 a month. They had 35 investigators on the case in Europe and Morocco, and Kennedy went to Morocco himself to look into one sighting. According to Mark Hollingsworth in the London Evening Standard, the early investigation was not without its problems. The investigators had little or no experience of detective work, they were too aggressive with witnesses, the relationship between Metodo 3 and the Portuguese police was poor,
Metodo3 n'était pas censé avoir des relations avec la police portugaise, l'enquête en cours interdisait l'intervention de "privés".
and the active involvement of Kennedy and his son was apparently not helpful.

Private initiatives included a Portuguese lawyer financing the search of a reservoir near Praia da Luz in February 2008; he said he had received intelligence from underworld sources that Madeleine had been killed and left in a lake, but nothing of significance was found. Dave Edgar, a retired detective working for the McCanns, released an e-fit in August 2009 of a woman with an Australian accent said to have asked two British men in Barcelona, Spain, shortly after the disappearance, whether they were there to deliver her new daughter.
Argot pour cocaïne. Ledit inspecteur à la retraite n'a même pas enquêté sur place, comme l'ont révélé les médias espagnols à l'époque.
 A South African property developer said in 2012 that ground radar scans showed there were bones beneath a driveway in Praia da Luz; the Polícia Judiciária declined to excavate it, a decision supported by the McCanns.

There were also suggestions of links to two known paedophiles. Urs Hans von Aesch, a Swiss man living at the time of the disappearance in Benimantell, Spain, was implicated by Swiss police in the abduction and murder of five-year-old Ylenia Lenhard on 31 July 2007, three months after Madeleine disappeared. Von Aesch was found dead from a gunshot wound, the day after Ylenia disappeared, in Oberbüren, Switzerland, 15 miles (24 km) from where Ylenia was taken. His death was ruled a suicide. In May 2009 Briton Raymond Hewlett, who had been jailed for sexual offences against young girls, also became a person of interest. He denied any involvement and died of cancer in Germany in December 2009.

There were thousands of reported sightings in Portugal and elsewhere. The McCanns gained access to police files in July 2008, when Leicestershire police agreed to share 81 pieces of information about sightings; the McCanns were forced to go to the High Court to obtain the material.
Les MC n'ont eu accès qu'aux documents (sans aucun intérêt) qu'ils avaient eux-mêmes fourni (provenant de leur hotline). Quant au reste, le LC a justifié le refus par le fait que le rôle des MC dans l'affaire n'avait pas été établi.
 In August 2008, 11,223 pages of the Portuguese police files were released to the public, including 2,550 pages of reported sightings, and in 2009 the McCanns obtained a copy from Portuguese police of a further 2,000 pages describing 50 reported sightings.

Oakley International report

The e-fits highlighted by Scotland Yard in October 2013 were produced in 2008 by a Washington, D.C.-registered detective agency, Oakley International, hired by Madeleine's Fund from March to September 2008 for over £500,000. Hollingsworth writes that the McCanns were desperate at this point, because their experience with the early private investigators had not been positive. Oakley was owned by Kevin Halligen, a businessman from Ireland who was arrested in November 2009 in connection with an unrelated fraud allegation. Halligen had earlier run a security company in London called Red Defence International Ltd, and it was this company that signed the contract with the McCanns. According to Hollinsgworth, Oakley sent a five-man surveillance team to Portugal and engaged in undercover operations among paedophile rings and Romani communities.

Oakley's surveillance operations were led by Henri Exton, a former British police officer who had worked undercover for M15. Exton questioned the significance of the Tanner sighting of a man carrying a child away from the resort at 21:15, because of what he saw as inconsistencies in Tanner's description. He focused instead on the sighting by the Smith family at 22:00, 500 yards (457 m) from apartment 5A, of a man carrying a child toward the beach^.
Encore une fois, on n'en sait rien. Smithman pouvait aussi bien aller à l'église. 
The Oakley team travelled to Ireland to interview the Smiths and produced e-fit images based on the family's description.
On ne sait pas qui a décrit Smithman, mais il n'est pas plausible que ce soit MS, sa femme ou sa fille Aoife.
This was a sensitive issue, because in September 2007 – four months after the disappearance – Martin Smith had watched television footage of the McCanns arriving back in the UK from Portugal, and as Gerry descended the steps of the aircraft carrying one of the twins, Smith believed he recognized him as the man he had seen with the child at 22:00 on the streets of Praia da Luz. This was demonstrably false
Non, une telle fausseté n'a pas été démontrée précisément !
 – something that Smith came to accept –
 Quand, comment, où ?
because at 22:00 numerous witnesses placed Gerry in or near the tapas restaurant. 
Matthew et Russell, les employés de table ont déclaré que l'alerte avait été lancée avant 22h. Seul Gerald MC la situe vers 22h10... 
Nevertheless, at the time of the Oakley investigation in 2008, the publication of Smith's e-fit of the man would have fed the conspiracy theories about the McCanns' involvement.
?

Exton handed the report to the Fund in November 2008, recommending the release of the Smith e-fits and the revised timeline, but according to the Sunday Times the relationship between the Fund and the company broke down, and Exton said the Fund's lawyers warned him that the report and its e-fits had to remain confidential. According to Hollingsworth, the disagreement centred on the company's fees and expenses.
Halligen n'a pas payé Exton etc., l'escroc a escroqué une fois de plus.
 The relationship was also strained because the report contained criticism of the McCanns or their friends, and raised the possibility that Madeleine had died in an accident after leaving the apartment herself through its unlocked doors. The Fund did not release the Smith e-fits to the public, or include them with the other images and artists' impressions published in Kate McCann's book, Madeleine, in 2011. Instead the Fund focused on the Tanner sighting, publishing that image in preference to the Smith e-fit, even though Tanner had not seen the man's face. The emphasis on the Tanner image placed the abduction at around 21:15 instead of just before 22:00, taking the investigation in a possibly significant different direction. Scotland Yard came to regard the Tanner report as a false lead.

The Oakley report was passed to the next team of investigators hired by the Fund, but the new team regarded it as "contaminated" because of the financial dispute between the McCanns and Oakley, and the Smith e-fits remained unpublished. After Scotland Yard became involved in 2011, they asked to see the report and released the e-fits in October 2013 to coincide with the BBC's Crimewatch reconstruction.

Media attention

British tabloids, social media

The overwhelming interest inevitably turned a harsh spotlight on the McCanns. Rehling wrote that the disappearance had all the ingredients the media and public could latch onto: a whodunnit involving a white, middle-class, nuclear family caught up in a nightmare of evil abroad. While the News of the World offered a reward of £1.5 million for Madeleine, another News International tabloid, The Sun, offered just £20,000 for information about Shannon Matthews, who had gone missing from a British council estate in February 2008 and whose mother had seven children by five men. But after a volte face by the tabloids, the McCanns' middle-class status, at first protective, became a weapon against them. Deborah Orr wrote that, "[i]n a widespread act of collective counter-prejudice, it was decided that it was precisely because the couple were middle-class, educated, respectable, and in vocational careers that one had to be careful not to be influenced by such thumpingly giant signs of their previous good character."

Even before the allegations of involvement, they were criticized for having left their children alone, despite the availability of a babysitting service and crèche; an online petition in June 2007 asking Leicestershire Social Services to investigate them gathered 17,000 signatures. Rehling wrote that parents distancing themselves from the McCanns became a form of magic, feeding into the tabloid obsession in England with good and bad parenting. Rehling argues that the case was paradigmatic because of the extent to which social media shaped the narrative. Posts on Twitter and other websites spread what Eilis O'Hanlon called "poisonous fantasies." Twitter was just one year old when Madeleine disappeared; O'Hanlon wrote that the case "could almost stand as a metaphor for the rise of social media as the predominant mode of public discourse." The attacks on the couple reportedly included threats on a discussion forum to kidnap one of their twins.
Qui a rapporté cela ? Le cousin Michael Wright. Les MC l'ont pris tellement au sérieux qu'ils n'ont même pas signalé la discussion à la police. En fait il s'agissait d'une plaisanterie, l'idée étant de trouver un moyen pour contraindre les MC à dire la vérité.

Kate came in for particular criticism. She was not mumsy enough, did not cry enough, was too attractive, too thin, too well-dressed, too intense, too controlled, according to media analyst Caroline Bainbridge. The media dug up her old nickname, "Hot Lips Healy," earned because she had partied at university. Her situation was reminiscent of the 1980 death of Azaria Chamberlain in Australia, where the baby's mother, Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, was deemed to have responded to her child's disappearance inappropriately, and as a result spent three years in prison for a murder that had not occurred.
Cette affaire n'a jamais été résolue. 

The McCanns responded to the allegations of involvement by bringing libel actions, and obtained an injunction in the UK against one man who continued to spread the claims (Bennett). The Daily Express, Daily Star and its sister Sunday papers published front-page apologies in March 2008 and agreed to pay £550,000 in libel damages, money that was donated to Madeleine's Fund. The Tapas Seven also sued; they were awarded £375,000 against the Express Group, again donated to Madeleine's Fund, along with a published apology in the Daily Express, after the newspaper suggested they had misled detectives to cover up for the McCanns.^[14]

Leveson Inquiry

The McCanns testified as core participants for two hours, on 23 November 2011, before the Leveson Inquiry into press standards in the UK. They told the inquiry that the British tabloids had declared "open season" on them. Kate described how photographers would lurk every day near her home and bang on her car as she left with her two-year-old children, most likely to obtain a startled expression. The stories that Madeleine was dead and that they were implicated damaged the search for their daughter, in their view;
Les infos n'ont pourtant pas cessé d'affluer au DIC de Portimao...
 certain myths developed (for example, that Madeleine's "body fluids" had been found in their hired car) that became difficult to counter because they were constantly repeated. In addition, the McCanns were warned that they were not allowed, under Portuguese law, to reveal anything they knew to be in official files; if they did, they faced a two-year jail sentence. This included the DNA analysis, which they knew – because they had seen it – was being wrongly reported as a result of leaks from the Portuguese police.
Ils n'ont pas vu les résultats de l'analyse de l'ADN. Pourquoi la fuite ne viendrait-elle pas du LC ou même du labo ?

In September 2007 the McCanns' solicitor and their campaign manager met the editors of the major newspapers and explained that there was no evidence to support what they were reporting. The solicitor also asked Leicestershire police to write to the news organizations; Matt Baggott, then chief constable, wrote to them twice in September and October 2007 urging restraint. The Express Group newspapers were identified as the worst offenders. The inquiry heard that the Daily Express editor had become "obsessed" with the McCanns; Lord Justice Leveson told the inquiry the newspaper had published "complete piffle" about Madeleine's disappearance.
Une chose du moins est claire dans cette ténébreuse affaire : la vérité sort de la bouche des victimes, les MC, aucun doute n'est permis là-dessus. Tout énoncé qui détonne par rapport à cette vérité est blâmé et sanctionné. Amen. 

The Daily Star, another Express Group newspaper, published a headline that the McCanns had sold Madeleine: "Maddie 'Sold' By Hard-Up McCanns". Other headlines included "DNA puts parents in frame: British experts insist their tests are valid" and "Parents' car hid a corpse". The British newspapers cited Portuguese newspapers, which in turn referred to unnamed sources. Jerry Lawton, a Daily Star reporter, told the inquiry that the leaks had come directly from the Portuguese police.
Raconter cela est un scoop ! Pourquoi s'en priver, si ce n'est lui qui l'écrit, ce sera un autre. These stories were followed in September 2008 by the publication in the News of the World of Kate's personal diaries, apparently leaked by Portuguese police via the Portuguese media.
Sur quoi s'appuie cet "apparently" ? 

New investigations 

Operation Grange case review

The British Home Office began discussions with the Association of Chief Police Officers in 2010 about setting up a new investigation, and which force would be most appropriate to handle it. In connection with this, the British Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre sought input that month from the West Yorkshire Police Homicide and Major Inquiry Team, which had found nine-year-old Shannon Matthews in March 2008.

At the request of Home Secretary Theresa May, Scotland Yard launched an investigative review of the case, called Operation Grange, in May 2011. The review, which had cost ₤5 million by June 2013, (plus de 12 mille livres au printemps 2016) was financed by a government contingency fund at the request of Prime Minister David Cameron, reportedly after News International persuaded the government to get the British police involved.
La pression faite sur DC à travers Rebekah Brooks évoque un chantage (menace de critiquer quotidiennement Theresa à la Une du Sun).
 The officer in charge of Operation Grange, DCI Andy Redwood from Scotland Yard's Homicide and Serious Crime Command (SCD1), said that the British and Portuguese police were working collaboratively. He said he rejected the "conspiracy theories" about the parents' involvement and was focusing on "a criminal act by a stranger."

In April 2012 Redwood said he believed there was a possibility that Madeleine was alive. His team of 28 detectives and seven civilians had by then reviewed 40,000 pieces of evidence – the equivalent of 100,000 pages – and identified 195 items for investigation within the files, as well as new leads. They also released an updated age-progressed image of Madeleine.

New British and Portuguese inquiries

In July 2013 DCI Redwood announced that Operation Grange had become a new criminal inquiry.^[5] Alison Saunders, senior crown prosecutor for London, and Jenny Hopkins, head of the Crown Prosecution Service's Complex Casework Unit in London, travelled to Portugal to discuss the new leads, and Scotland Yard made a formal request for assistance to the Portuguese police. The Operation Grange team said in May 2013 that they wanted to trace 12 casual manual workers who were at the Ocean Club resort when Madeleine disappeared, including six British cleaners in a white van who were offering their services to British expats.^[150] In October 2013 Scotland Yard and the BBC's Crimewatch staged a reconstruction of the kidnapping that was broadcast in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.^[151]

Several days after Crimewatch, Portugual's attorney general, Joana Marques Vidal, announced that the Portuguese police had reopened their own investigation. The statement said they had been reviewing the evidence since March 2011 and had identified new lines of inquiry.^[10] One theory being pursued by the Portuguese police, according to a tabloid, Correio da Manhã, is that Madeleine was kidnapped and killed by a former restaurant worker at the Ocean Club, who was fired in 2006 for theft. The man, originally from Cape Verde, West Africa, was not questioned at the time of the disappearance because his name was not on the list of employees given to police. Mobile-phone tracking techniques used by police in Porto, who led the case review, showed that he was in the resort at the time of the abduction. It was this information that persuaded the attorney general to reopen the inquiry, the newspaper said. The man, who died aged 40 in a 2009 tractor accident, had a police record in Portugal for theft, but along with others had received a prime-ministerial pardon in 1996 rather than being deported.^[152]

Sightings

Scotland Yard released several e-fits for the Crimewatch reconstruction, including the e-fit of the man the Smith family saw carrying a child in the direction of the beach that night. After the programme aired in the UK, several people called in with the same name for the man.^[154] Crimewatch also reported that police were interested in blonde-haired men seen near the McCanns' apartment who may have been involved in reconnaissance for a pre-planned abduction. Another theory is that Madeleine disturbed a burglary. There had been a fourfold increase in burglaries in the area between January 2007 and the disappearance in May, including two incidents in the McCanns' block in the two weeks directly before the disappearance, during which intruders entered through apartment windows.^[155]

In the days leading up to the disappearance, there had been several sightings of men behaving oddly near apartment 5A. On Thursday, 3 May – the day of the disappearance – between 15:30 and 17:30, two black-haired men (right) visited apartments close to the McCanns', ostensibly making collections for orphanages; one was seen in the McCann's block at 16:00. A second had been seen a week earlier going up the steps to the McCanns' apartment and speaking to someone on the balcony.^[153]

At 8 am on Monday, 30 April, one girl – whose grandparents used to own 5A – saw a blonde-haired man leaning with his palms against a nearby wall on a path behind the apartment block. She saw him again on 2 May near the car park by the pool, looking at 5A. She described him as Caucasian, mid-30s, "ugly" with spots, and wearing a black leather jacket and sunglasses (right). A second witness saw a blonde-haired man on 29 April not far from the apartments, and saw him again on 2 May across the road from 5A. She remembered him because he made her uneasy: she described him as "ugly," with pitted skin and a large nose. That day or the next, a third witness saw a man standing by a wall near the car park next to the pool. She said he was staring at the McCanns' apartment block, where a white van was parked.^[157]

On 3 May a fourth witness saw a man walk through a gate leading away from the apartments; she noticed him because he seemed to be trying to close the gate quietly, with both hands, and was looking around him as he walked away.^[157] At 14:30 that day another witness saw two blonde-haired men on the balcony of 5C, an empty apartment two doors from the McCanns'. At 16:00–17:00 a blonde-haired man was seen near the McCanns' apartment, and at 18:00 the same or another blonde-haired man was seen standing in the stairwell of the McCanns' block. At 23:00, an hour after the disappearance was reported, two blonde-haired men were seen in a nearby street speaking in raised voices; when they saw they had been noticed, they lowered their voices and walked away.^[158]