Kate and Gerry are "extremely disappointed." Well, I can appreciate that having spent 8 years and thrown a great deal of the search fund for their daughter at suing the police officer who was trying to find her, they must be disappointed. Coulda made a million €s there folks! Drat! This is so disappointing!
Eight years since they brought the action. Rather a long time to be waiting for that payout from Gonçalo and now it's not coming. Drat!
And in that time "the landscape has dramatically changed." It sure has. While the mainstream media have jumped on every trivial utterance from their mouths, linked them to every high profile missing child case anywhere in the world, the McCanns have seriously lost credibility in the eyes of the general public as can be seen by reading comments, where they are allowed, on the web sites of major newspapers.
While Kate and Gerry state that they have always wanted a joint investigation by the Metropolitan Police and the Policia Judiciaria, the original investigation was carried out jointly by a team of British police officers working with the PJ in Portugal. In the years since the Metropolitan Police have been involved, hundreds of people have been interviewed, millions have been spent, but the original people involved in the case, the McCanns and their friends, have not been interviewed. Now, why didn't the Met Police go back to the beginning?
Both police authorities involved in the present investigation believe there is no evidence that Madeleine has come to physical harm? Well, I guess adding the word "physical" there makes the McCanns looks slightly less like they're living in La La Land. For years, they have been repeating the mantra that there is no evidence that Madeleine has been harmed. Right! They wanted the police and the public to believe that Madeleine had been abducted but that abduction does not harm a child? Taking a child from everyone and everything she knows is not harmful! If they believed that themselves, they really were/are deluded, but then there is no evidence that Madeleine was in fact abducted. The McCanns have to keep it up, though, especially now that the Supreme Court has decided in Gonçalo's favour.
While I think the Met Police have been looking in all the wrong places to find what happened to Madeleine, I do not believe the Portuguese police believe that Madeleine has not been physically harmed. I believe the PJ are still hoping for justice for Madeleine and justice for themselves too, after years of offensive reporting about a "botched investigation," and articles describing them as "sardine munchers,"
As for the "disgraced police officer," as the British press described Amaral on many occasions, he has finally been exonerated in court. If the McCanns are looking to take this to the European Court, maybe they should bear in mind the recent decision of that court that a Portuguese journalist had the right to express his opinion. They could end up even more disappointed.
