Political Courage

(original video here)

As our regular readers know, we have a policy of publishing new posts on Fridays, unless we find a reason to do otherwise.

Last Friday, we made an exception. We decided to postpone the publishing of the post we had lined up, “Stink Bombs”, and keep the post “The Proof that Ocean Club Reads Textusa” for an extra week. We explained the reasons why.

But fate would have it, during the night of that same Friday, 14Mar14, we were alerted by a “DO NOT PUBLISH” reader that Mr Amaral was being interviewed in a TV programme. Thank you very much, Anonymous reader.

We, in turn, asked our friend Maria, to keep an eye and see when the video would be posted online, and as soon as it was, she gave us a heads-up. Thank you very much, Maria.

This is a very important video not as much because of its content but of the host and channel. We consider it important enough to have made it an exception to our publishing scheduling.

The channel, Porto Canal, is a regional one, of the second largest city of Portugal: Porto.

This city is very regionally spirited, projected internationally by its prestigious and famous Port wine and it’s very successful soccer club FC Porto.

The host, Luis Filipe Meneses (LFM), is a very important figure within the Partido Social-Democrata (PSD), one of the two rotating parties in power since the April Revolution of 1974. The other being Partido Socialista (PS).

PSD, led by Passos Coelho, is currently in power together with Paulo Porta’s CDS/PP.

LFM was PSD’s leader in 2007/2008.

As of 1997 until 2013 he was the Mayor of Porto’s largest neighbouring city, Vila Nova de Gaia. This city, South of Porto, is where the Port Wine cellars are based.

LFM was PSD’s candidate to be Porto’s Mayor in 2013, an election he lost.

LFM has a weekly show in the Porto Canal called “A Opinião de Luís Filipe Menezes” (“The Opinion of Luís Filipe Menezes”) in which he’s interviewed by the also very popular TV anchor, Julio Magalhães, who moved from TVI to this regional channel.

The fact that LFM, a very prominent political figure, invited Mr Amaral to speak about Maddie is relevant by itself.

LFM’s questions to Mr Amaral indicate very clearly that he’s not a subscriber of the official abduction thesis.

In terms of content, we would like to point out that Mr Amaral says, publicly, that at the time he was taken off the case, what was established between the PJ and the British police was to take the investigation towards the clarification of death and body occultation and no longer towards abduction.

He states that attached to the process in Portugal there are hair samples, that were returned by the UK to the PJ, that should be checked in terms of DNA but this is still to be done.

When LFM asks Mr Amaral if he thinks if ever the case will ever be solved, Mr Amaral answers saying that when there will be political courage, it will be solved. 


Full Transcript:

(In Portuguese: Maria, in Spanish: Mercedes & Mila)

Julio Magalhães (JM): Now Gonçalo Amaral is here, former Inspector of PJ. Dr. Meneses, it’s your guest, do you wish to introduce him? Make a very brief presentation?

Luís Filipe Meneses (LFM): Gonçalo Amaral needs no introduction but he is the motivation of our invitation.

Well,.. first, because Gonçalo Amaral due to the visibility he achieved with some of the cases he was involved professionally, has also put that in our imaginary confrontational dialectic between a politically correct policeman and a Portuguese “Dirty Harry”.

Let’s then know if he’s a Portuguese “Dirty Harry” or a politically correct policeman.

Besides that, the case, namely the Maddie case, puts into question... raises a number of issues that deserve some reflection.

Seven years have passed and it is a case that is still opening newscasts around the world and provokes us to make a reflection on the qualifications of our PJ, namely in handling crimes with this complexity,  it raises questions if our police, our state are protected from national and international political influences that interfere in the daily professional judgment of the polices and other criminal investigation agents and, on the other hand, the historical memory of what happened, with to some questions that we can put to Gonçalo Amaral, may make viewers individually assume a closer judgment to what happened that night seven years ago in Praia da Luz in the Algarve.

JM: Gonçalo Amaral, good night! It is with great pleasure in having you here. 

Gonçalo Amaral (GA): Good evening and thank you for the invitation

JM: Before the questions, even because Dr. Luís Filipe Meneses will talk a bit with you, I would ask you if you regret everything that has happened in your life, seven years later you have written, have talked about it, lost your family, your job… would do exactly the same today?

GA: I would do exactly the same with a slight difference. I would never leave the PJ, so,.. it could be a problem for the PJ... at the time I thought about it,.. do I leave or do I not leave, if I stay in the police. If I'm a problem for the police or if I leave and have all the other problems. But I wouldn’t leave.

JM: Today you wouldn’t leave the PJ?

GA: No! I have heard of teachers who talk about wanting to return and asking to stop their retirement. I could also stop as I see I still have a place in the PJ. But it seems that is only possible for doctors, isn’t? No disrespect for doctors! [LFM, although a full-time politician is a paediatrician]

JM: Of course, of course.

GA: No, but in fact I don’t regret what I did with conviction, I did it to defend the investigative model, of what should be a criminal investigation.

We here have just spoke of the politically correct or the politically correct policeman and I understand that criminal investigations cannot be politically correct because they don’t have to worry about politics.

And what happened was that.. and it continues to happen, is we have to be politically correct relatively subordinated to the English power. That happens, it happened on 2 October during the Treaty of Lisbon, in the discussions between the Eng. [Engineer, a honorary title similar to Dr.] and Prime Minister at the time, José Sócrates and Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister, in which he came to the newspapers to say he had pressed the Portuguese Prime Minister about the case.

Therefore, it was already a political case and when politics meddles in a criminal investigation nothing comes to a good conclusion, be it relative to a criminal investigation concerning a homicide, be it relative to a theft, be it relative to a disappearance, be it a normal case and corruption is there and will be involved but back to the beginning of the question, I don’t regret it.

I don't regret it because although principles and values don't fill the refrigerator, they enrich me in other ways.

JM: Dr. Meneses…

LFM: I would put a first question Gonçalo Amaral that perhaps should be the last.

I want also to say that I’m never neutral in these matters, I try to be impartial. I have a special liking for Gonçalo Amaral and for the style of policeman he was.

Good, and the first question is precisely the one that perhaps should be the last and not starting with the particular but with the general: the Inspector Goncalo Amaral who led one of the world’s most mediatic investigation in the last years, the citizen Gonçalo Amaral now, with everything that happened and saw and contacted, what is your belief? Was Maddie McCann abducted or died?

GA: Maddie McCann has disappeared and as of then is... died...

She died that night and, by the way these are the conclusions made in the Process itself in September 2007, the PJ concluded,.. and this is a conclusion in the context of an investigation that was not finished but has there a principle, it’s from the sequence of a series of clues that are collected that it’s concluded that she very likely died. And she died that night.

The circumstances of death are still to be clarified, what mechanism, what happened for that death to have occurred are still to be clarified.

And if parents today give the impression that the daughter would be alive or was alive and they have to bet she's alive, they forget that, just after the investigation, they were the first to give those signs of death, they were the first to say that their daughter... that it was necessary, in the case, an individual, one South African Army Colonel with a miraculous machine to find the corpse,.. so those who invited this South African gentleman to come to Portugal were the parents. So as to find a corpse.

Then months later, years later they continue to say, they keep talking that she would be alive. Now Scotland Yard, now in agreement with them too, it seems at least tacitly, it seems that the child is dead.

Obviously, it happens in a lot of these situations, there is much talk... they pushed a lot over these years a circumstance like it happened in other cases where a certain child disappeared and reappeared alive years later and even had children and nearby the abductor, so Madeleine can also be probably alive.

They just forget a small detail. Not forget. They don’t enlighten us because these people have all the information, they have a staff that works with all the information. It's a bit strange and they forget one detail: all those children who have appeared either in Austria or in the United States, when they disappeared they weren’t 3 or 4 years old, they were close to being ten years old, all were girls close to 9 and 10 years of age and there is no girl who has disappeared aged 3 or 4 years. For a abductor that makes someone, a girl, slave, what has been seen is that the age is not the age of 3 or 4 years old but an age near adolescence. They forget that detail.

Now the conviction, I have no doubt about what to me happened to Madeleine McCann. Madeleine McCann died that day, that night in that apartment. And her body disappeared.

LFM: On what do you base this conviction?

GA: On lot of things. In a series of clues, a number of contradictions in the testimonies of those parents, in the testimonies from the friends, traces that were collected with the help of the British special dogs that have never failed in the UK, never have failed this far, working with the FBI...

LFM: That was one of the questions I wanted to know if these dogs in their curriculum have ever any time failed,..?

GA: Never failed, never failed in terms,.. these searches never failed and it was made to our knowledge at the time several cases, several situations, where they worked and never failed. Therefore the hypothesis was that they had failed in Portugal and I, sometimes joking, say it could only be because of the heat.

LFM: Was there human blood in the trunk of the car? 

GA: No doubt about it! In the apartment and in the boot of the car. By the way, this human blood is said by the English Lab, and t’s in a prior report that is in the process, where it’s said it’s the daughter... the daughter of Gerald McCann. It would be from a descendant of.

Then, later, they came up with the hypothesis, they altered those hypothesis, come to say that combination that gives that DNA could be from anyone. By chance there is there a DNA very similar, 90%, of Madeleine McCann’s but could be a DNA built by me, by Julio Magalhaes and by the Dr [referring to LFM] and that would end being that DNA profile.

But the funny thing is that it gives the DNA profile of Madeleine McCann. It does not give the profile of Julio Magalhaes, Gonçalo Amaral nor of Dr. Luis Filipe Menezes or of the doctor that did that test.

We don’t have any doubt and this was discussed at a level in the Portuguese Justice, to the General Prosecutor level, that there was a change in the English laboratory of manipulation of that data.

The FSS, the English Lab has already been questioned about various situations namely in terms of the IRA in Ireland and in terms of bomb attacks, also these traces,.. this way of finding the DNA, to examine the DNA / copy number was questioned about a trace found in an Irish bomb case. And that Laboratory’s credibility was questioned.

But there is one situation here, relative to the Laboratory, which must be taken into account, There are those records that were made by technicians and by scientists who examine and we have to look at those records, to look at what they wrote, in the day-to-day when the evidence was examined, the traces that were remitted there, to what they were writing because after that we see what is the outcome that results in that report they sent here, to Portugal.

And then there is another situation, that it still is possible, to know or to gather clues if in fact that those dogs have failed or not, if indeed ... if that ... in the trunk of that car, I'm referring to the car rented by the McCanns about 15 or 20 days after the disappearance, where traces of blood were found, traces that... that the laboratory says they may be, but there is no absolute certainty that they are from Madeleine McCann and that hair was also found.

Hair, says the laboratory, by the coloring, that’s how the exam was done in the old days, examination, comparing if the hair color was or wasn’t from a person.

Nowadays it is possible to do and, even then it was, do DNA tests to the hair.

There are those who say, and some laboratories say that, that it’s only possible to identify the DNA with the hair root. The English Laboratory says it's not possible because these don’t have the hair root, the root ... and so they won’t do the exam.

These hairs are in Portugal, they were returned to Portugal and are attached to the process. It’s simple. It is the Public Ministry, who has the investigation, to take those hairs and send them to a European or other Laboratory where it’s done this kind of examinations without requiring the hair root.

LFM: But this was never done, is it?

GA: But it was never done. It was never done and what it’s said is that it may have been there a contamination but we will be sure or not if that hair is from Madeleine McCann. Then there will be many a doubt to discuss, to clarify. Now there can’t exist a proof and we’re talking about the man who died from underneath a tractor because he fired himself a month earlier because there were 5 euros missing... that may not have been him...

LFM: There is another piece, there is another interesting piece which is an Irish family, on seeing the McCann couple arriving at London’s airport, says it recognises by posture of the father... a man who was carrying a child that night. Why is it that when this statement is made neither the PJ nor the SY went to hear to this Irish Family?

GA: We were on the day of the Lisbon Treaty, which happens to be on my birthday, the 2nd of October, 2007. It was the Treaty of Lisbon, I celebrate my birthday on 2 October and was fired, in quotes, in Portimão, that 2 October day....

And it was when we are preparing the coming to Portugal of the head of this family, which is of about five people. It was him, the wife, the son, the daughter-in-law and the other daughter, who see that day, that night of 3 May around from 10 o'clock at night, when they come from a restaurant in Praia da Luz and cross with an individual who goes down a certain street in direction to the beach and carrying a child in his arms and her head on his shoulder, here, and is as if she’s sleeping. And later come to say that, from the news, because the next day they returned to Ireland, come to say it can be Madeleine McCann and it could have been the person who carried Madeleine McCann.

They are heard, they are heard in the process immediately in May and June. They came to Portugal, were heard and gave a description of who the person was, his physical appearance, how he walked, the description of the clothes, if he was Portuguese, if he wasn’t, that he would be a tourist because he was sunburned, but wasn’t Latin, they give the age of the person, give also the child’s at least by the size and that was it. Only later when Gerald McCann and Kate McCann leave Portugal for England in September after being heard as arguidos, they fled, literally, fled to England and with them the English police who were cooperating with us but then also disappeared and we came to the conclusion that the English Police were in Portugal only to collaborate in some way to protect that couple But when they arrive in England there’s an image that has already crossed the world, at the time crossed... that is Gerald McCann coming down the steps of the plane, the stairs that access the plane and walking on the runway with one, with one… of the twins like this, in the same way in the arms with the head here.

And what, that family, says is that individual by the posture, the way he walks, the way he carries the child is who they had seen on the day of May 3, the night of May 3. They don’t say anything more, they say that’s where it goes.

And what happens? We started with the efforts to bring them to Portugal, to hear them, the father of this family would have come here, so, the older element was who was available to come to Portugal and we had everything handled: authorization Police for them come to Portugal from PJ’s National Director, ticket emission, if I’m not mistaken tickets were to be  issued, the hotel lacked... so it was just a matter of logistics and it is when, on the 2nd October, after I had been questioned by a newspaper, the Diário de Notícias, about what I thought about the English police saying that Madeleine had been seen in Morocco I said ... I blurted that they should concerned themselves with... knowing really what had happened to Madeleine McCann instead of concerning themselves about other situations ...

Because when the English police left Portugal, what had been established between the Portuguese and the English police was that the police investigation had to proceed in terms of understanding how the death had happened, Madeleine McCann’s death, and what had happened to the corpse.

We were not talking here about abductions or the child being taken to be a sex slave, of nothing of the sort. We were talking about death and occultation of a corpse.

And it's on that 2 October day that I leave. I left the investigation. It’s on that 2 October day that Gordon Brown speaks with Jose Socrates.

It would be good for Sr Eng José Socrates to explain, if he could explain, what happened. I think his posture was, from what I got to understand at the time, a distancing even from the investigation, by not paying much attention, not giving much importance to Gordon Brown’s statements.

It was Gordon Brown who tried to involve the Portuguese Prime Minister in this controversy, so to speak.

But then the one who comes to replace me later considers that, this to respond directly to your question, considers that it isn’t relevant to bring the Irish to Portugal and we stayed like that. So the Irish were never again heard ... they were heard through… 

LFM: Do you think that if at the time, Juca [diminutive of Júlio] Magalhães had abandoned TVI to be Advisor to the McCann couple, would it, would it comprehensible? How is it comprehensible that the spokesman for the English Prime Minister had left, in 24 hours, Tony Blair to be the McCann family’s spokesman? Isn’t that strange?

GA: Yesl, that is almost ... it's another mystery within the mystery, and maybe if we understand that little mystery it can be understood what is behind… not the disappearance ... not the child’s death but what is behind the protection… of the why protect...

JM: ... that couple ...

GA: ... this family, this couple

JM: Did you notice that, Gonçalo Amaral, the power of this couple?

GA: Yes, have I not noticed? I have even noticed in my bank account in what I get at the end of the month. This has happened like this. Now ...

LFM: Is it true ... is it true that one of the elements of the group two years before had been denounced by another companion?

GA: Exactly!

LFM: Of having behaviours near those that could indicate...

GA: ... that is important ....

LFM: .... some extravagant behaviour from the point of view of his tendency to be a paedophile?

GA: It's true ... there is a mystery figure who may even have to do so with the departure of Clarence Mitchell from the British Government to go support the couple. It can be said it is a conspiracy theory but it is not.

There is also a British couple, also doctors, who two years earlier went holidaying with the McCann couple and their children, with Madeleine and with other medical couples, being among them a man who is David Payne.

This David Payne is the last witness, is the witness that on May 3 says he went there to the apartment and that he saw those little children and that they looked heavenly angels, were all very nicely washed, very white, something out of Heaven and is the person who bathed in the holidays, in these holidays he organized, that bathed the girls of 2, 3 years, not only his daughters, his children, but the children of the others.

And it is these circumstances of bathing the children of the others and in comments he makes in a vacation period in which he speaks of, and according to the statements of Dr Katherine Gaspar, who is the name of the person who denounces, statements that are in process that say…

LFM: …denounces extravagant behaviour of the gentleman.

GA: Yes, and this is something that, if we have time, we'll try to explain. She says ... what she says is that he made a gesture and asked questions to Gerald McCann about Madeleine McCann in front of Madeleine McCann herself, who at the time was 2 years old...

LFM: In the investigation, it was never explored the possibility of this man being a paedophile?

GA: Exactly! The question is this: it’s that these statements came to Portugal after I left the investigation, on the 2 .. I left on 2 October and they arrived months later.

They are the statements of Dr Katherine Gaspar and of her husband to the British Police on May 16, 2007, 15 days after the disappearance, statements that the Portuguese police were not informed of and arrive in Portugal via .... by mail, no, by fax, under other documents, these statements come loose and what someone from the British Police does was, here are these statements and now you investigate, question.

And no one from the Portuguese Police, who replaced me, who came next, has yet questioned, nor SY.

No one questions, no one investigates what is going on there. Dr Katherine Gaspar, who denounced David Payne to the British police, was never heard in the Portuguese process and was never included in the rogatory letter which was issued by the Portuguese authorities. This is the truth, and we’re going on with debates, with burglaries...

JM: …Goncalo Amaral ...

GA: ...and things that are in the process are not investigated.

JM: All this makes one think, and just to finish, that it will never be solved ..... it will never be ... it’s a case that will stay in history without being solved?.

GA: I think it will be solved, it will be solved ... and there we come back to politics, when there will political will on both sides.

JM: And when it is proved that Madeleine McCann was really dead, do you intend to be reimbursed?

GA: Well, it seems that if I use the strategy of the couple McCann, it’s already tacitly acknowledged. The SY has already said she’s dead, so... not having proved anything…

LFM: If you had the McCann couple’s financial capability resulting due to the fund that was placed at their disposal, would you have found the culprits?

GA: I have done a lot to try to find the culprits, there is much information that is still unexplored. Now, it’s hard in our country for us to be able to investigate, because a private person cannot investigate...

LFM: and do you think you were removed from your ... from your duties, and marginalized until you leaving the PJ because you were too close to finding ...

GA: No.

LFM: ... the truth about the case?

GA: No, not don’t go that way. I left the investigation and was withdrawn from the investigation because the case had to be dominated politically, only and only because of that.

Because I opposed the archiving, and directly, and with police directors and said that I disagreed with the archiving.

It was suggested and said to me that there are processes, there are investigations that have no end, that never have a result and that I shouldn’t do much to.. That I call it quits and so all was set-up to... I always opposed and so I left the investigation and not for being close.

As such I don’t take it, no, I don’t take my exit with something of they being afraid of… no. The question was ... it’s that the case is political, just and only political. Politics is what is handling this issue and when politics enters the investigations... when investigations are politically correct we won’t go anywhere.

JM: Gonçalo Amaral we are going to have to finish, just half a minute more, you have already said that your belief is that Madeleine McCann is dead. I don’t want you to answer but do you also have some conviction about who is the author of the crime?

GA: Who is? Well.... only in the accident hypothesis, now there are people responsible, those who had the guardianship of the child certainly have some responsibility, to what extent I don’t know.

LFM: Thank you very much. I think in seven years from now maybe we will be here to do a follow-up

GA: ...... a cycle, seven years is always a cycle in people's lives.

JM: Oh yeah?

GA: ...they say yes, some say and there are some theories ...

JM: Gonçalo Amaral it was nice to have you here and very good evening and thank you

GA: Thank you very much.

JM: Dr. Luis Filipe Meneses, congratulations for the guest for tonight and for this comment from Luis Filipe Meneses. Next, the latest news, good night.

And it goes without saying, thank you to the reader who alerted us!!