Sky apology to Robert Murat.

Sunday Mirror journalist, Lori Campbell.

1:17pm UK, Friday November 14, 2008

Between May 2007 and September 2008 we published on this website a video of, and an article about, an interview with Sunday Mirror journalist Lori Campbell.

The interview strongly suggested that Mr Murat was guilty of the abduction of Madeleine McCann.

It also suggested that Mr Murat had lied about his role in the police investigation.

These allegations were seriously defamatory of Mr Murat and untrue.

We accept that Mr Murat had no involvement in the abduction of Madeleine and we would like to apologise to Mr Murat for the hurt, distress and damage to his reputation our publications have caused.

Sky News 14/11/08

Robert Murat receives damages from BSkyB.

Today, at the High Court in London, Robert Murat, who was not present, accepted substantial damages from Sky over claims that there were strong grounds for believing he was involved in Madeleine McCann's disappearance.

From ITN news:

"His solicitor Louis Charalambous told Mr Justice Eady that an article and video on the Sky News website claimed that in the early days after Madeleine's disappearance from Praia da Luz, Portugal, in May 2007, Mr Murat's behaviour was reminiscent of child murderer Ian Huntley."

"Outside court, Mr Charalambous said that the settlement represented the final stage of Mr Murat's claims against those sections of the British media "which defamed him so terribly".

"He has been entirely successful and vindicated," he said.

"It was particularly important to him to nail this particular lie - that he acted in some way reminiscent to the Soham murderer Ian Huntley when, in fact, he was working flat out to help try to find Madeleine."

Anything to say, today, Ms Campbell?

Maddie: revelations about the PJ mole taken up in Portugal - silence in the UK.

http://sosmaddie.dhblogs.be/

13/11/08

See original article.

The disclosure of details of the video interview by a Spanish detective, denouncing the leak of confidential information about the work of the PJ's team of investigators in the Madeleine McCann case has been taken up in Portugal while in the United Kingdom total silence reigns about this information.

Yesterday, the journalist Hernani Carvalho published an article devoted to this revelation where the PJ's former coordinator of the Department of Criminal Investigation, Gonçalo Amaral, states he knows what it's about, but he thinks the time is not right for giving clarification. According to statements from the former head of the investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance, he is still waiting for the legal action the McCanns have threatened him with, because "on that occasion, there will be a lot more to say and to reveal."

Today, the journalist Luis Maneta, in the daily newspaper 24 Horas, returns to the subject for which he has tried, without success, to get a reaction from the PJ's national directorate.

Disappearance of Antoine de Brugerolle - police looking for a white Peugeot car.

Le Figaro 10/11/08

Antoine's mother and her partner, who state they don't drive, were allegedly seen driving alone in a car.

Consulting vehicle licensing records, checking with garages, searching through motorway tolls: two months after little Antoine's disappearance in Issoire, the police step up their investigations with the hope of finding a white Peugeot car in which a witness states having seen the child's mother and her partner driving on the outskirts of the small town, alone, a few days before the alert was issued.

Considered to be "reliable" by the investigators of the unit "Disappearance 63", this witness statement, if confirmed by physical evidence, could move the case forward because since she reported her son's disappearance on September 11th at 9.47pm, Alexandrine Brugerolle de Fraissinette, who has neither a car nor driving licence, maintains that she does not know how to drive - same with her partner, Sébastien Ribière. "Since the start, their defence rests notably on this statement, a source close to the case reveals. If the child's body has not been found in Issoire in spite of a great many searches, we must accept that someone has transported it out of the town, probably in a motor vehicle - of which they state they are incapable."

Bin bags

In the days that followed the child's disappearance, the police wondered why Alexandrine Brugerolle obtained a pack of 100 litre bin bags on September 10th, which were not found in her home. In custody, she indicated having made that purchase in error before going back and exchanging them at Monoprix for 30 litre bags. However, checks with the supermarket did not confirm that version, the check-outs not having retained any trace of the exchange.

Exploring all leads, including that of an abduction, the investigators are also interested in a debt of "several thousand euros" that Alexandrine's partner allegedly ran up in connection with drug trafficking near Clermont. "At the moment, that hypothesis is not backed up by any real facts", a source close to the investigation explains, however. In the end, several police officers continue to work on the theory according to which the child could have been taken from his mother by a third party wishing to offer him a "better" life.

In this context, checks were made with the people around Alexandrine, for the moment, without result. Antoine's mother, aged 23, recently found a place to live in Clermont-Ferrand. "Before that, for a time she took refuge with her father who left soon after her birth, recently moved back to Puy-de-Dôme," her lawyer Anne-Laure Lebert explains, and goes on: "My client, who is unjustly suspected from the start, is trying to stay hopeful of seeing her son alive again - but she is afraid that the delay at the beginning of the investigation may not be made up."

Portugal: Marinho Pinto and the Bar Association in a serious conflict of interests

SOS Maddie Blogspot 11/11/08

An obvious sign of unease for the Portuguese legal system, the decision by the Bar Association, for the second time in its history, to constitute itself as assistant in a new trial against the PJ inspectors, is now seen as a serious conflict of interests. The decision taken by the president of the bar, Marinho Pinto, is viewed with suspicion by certain people because there could be private interests, because in this new trial - which begins this Wednesday before the court in Lisbon - the alleged victim is defended by Jerónimo Martins, vice-president of the association, and by Bárbara Marinho Pinto, daughter of the president of the bar.

The Bar Association, under the leadership of Marinho Pinto, had already drawn attention to itself when it became assistant in the ongoing trial in the Faro court, against five other PJ inspectors, accused of acts of torture against Léonor Cipriano, amongst them Gonçalo Amaral.

Curiously, the decision taken by the Bar Association (OA) could also be seen as a conflict of interests if account is taken of Marinho Pinto's role in the disclosure of photos of the supposed physical results of assault on Joana's mother, before he became president of the bar.

If account is taken of Gonçalo Amaral, former coordinator of the PJ in the investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance, being one of the accused in the ongoing trial at the court in Faro, where the Bar Association is assistant, the case risks becoming even more embarrassing, because Bárbara Marinho Pinto, daughter of the current president of the bar, works for the office of Rogério Alves, former president of the bar and lawyer for Kate and Gerry McCann.

Meanwhile, the situation was denounced today, in statements to the Portuguese daily, Correio da Manha, by António Pires de Lima, former president of the Bar Association. According to this jurist, there is an obvious and serious, "moral incompatibility" between the private interests of Marinho Pinto and those of the Bar Association of which he is the public face. On this matter, António Pires de Lima does not rule out the possibility of there being a "legal incompatibility".

In this new trial, an official of the CP - the equivalent of the SNCF in France - accuses five inspectors of assault during an interrogation even if he only identifies three, the events going back to March 2000.

The trial is part of open conflict between the PJ and the Public Prosecutor.

The ongoing trial in the court at Faro, between Léonor Cipriano's memory lapses and the her lawyer's persecution of Gonçalo Amaral, would only be one more episode in the conflict between the Public Ministry's judges and the PJ. This is the conclusion that comes from analysis of the written records and other documents in the trial where the former coordinator of the PJ's Portimao Department of Criminal Investigation (DIC) appears in the dock accompanied by four other inspectors.

To be continued.

SOS Maddie Blogspot

Duarte Levy: 11/11/08

SOS Madeleine McCann - "McCanns had access to confidential PJ information."

SOS Madeleine McCann 11/11/08

Maddie: the private (detectives) received help from a PJ mole.

A private Spanish detective reveals how the McCanns were able to have access to confidential police information in the Maddie case.

According to one of the Spanish detectives hired by Metodo 3 in the context of their contract with Kate and Gerry McCann, a PJ inspector allegedly gave confidential information to the Spanish agency concerning the movements of the Portuguese investigators and their British colleagues in the investigation into Maddie's disappearance.

The information thus obtained allowed the private detectives to inform the McCann couple and their entourage about work being planned by the Portuguese investigators: "Several of Amaral's men's initiatives failed thanks to information given by their colleague...but there was also information coming from informers linked to the British embassy," this detective states.

"This is the information that allowed us to know in advance what inspector Amaral and his colleagues wanted to do," the private detective continues during an interview recently recorded in Spain, stressing that, "the investigation would probably have ended differently without the intervention of the private (detectives), but also of certain British professionals."

In his interview, video recorded in unusual conditions, and which will be included in a documentary for television about Madeleine McCann's disappearance, the Spanish detective clearly identifies the PJ inspector and also puts forward, "that he benefited from a certain protection by the PJ at Faro."

The detective goes further and states, "that at times when the investigation was closed, thanks to information received from the Portuguese inspector, we created diversions in the media."

"That didn't always work, because I noticed that certain operations were set up without our knowing in advance. I imagine that Amaral must have had his suspicions and that he limited access to information to men he trusted," the detective adds.

"The investigation was practically condemned in advance...we knew in advance what Amaral was preparing and the desired objective in his operations," states the detective who, after several months of working for Metodo 3, had even tried to make contact with the Portimao DIC coordinator, before he was dismissed from the investigation: "I had personally met Gonçalo Amaral a few years ago, but he mustn't have remembered me and as soon as he heard that I was linked to Metodo 3 he refused to speak to me, arguing that if I had important information to bring to the case, this should be done in an official manner."

"He (Gonçalo Amaral) was known to us as a hard guy, in particular in cases of fighting drug trafficking...he is incorruptible," the detective concludes.

The revelation which risks creating controversy around the Algarve PJ, meanwhile confirms the suspicions raised by certain investigators. At least two PJ inspectors, contacted by SMM, directly put forward the name of the inspector who allegedly passed on the confidential information to the detectives of the Spanish agency. According to them, the man benefited from a certain protection from the Faro commission and his behaviour was not new, because he had allegedly previously committed the same offence in other investigations.

"We are no longer looking for Maddie....me, in any case, I was never hired to do that."

According to the same detective, he was allegedly never hired to look for Madeleine MCann: "We are no longer looking for Maddie..me, in any case, I was never hired to do that. All I was asked to do was gather the most details serving to direct the Portuguese investigation towards Morocco or Spain.

This former detective - who is no longer able to carry on his work - further states that the Spanish agency allegedly led British journalists to Morocco for them to meet previously selected and paid witnesses: "the aim was to spread the Moroccan lead in the media and thus confirm that it was indeed an abduction, which the Portuguese and British police did not want to believe," states the detective, stressing that he is unable to say whether theMcCanns were behind this kind of operation.

"The couple never asked me to lie about anything whatsoever. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the agency or the couple's entourage," the detective concludes.

(Editor's note: so who did ask him to lie? And about what?)

Duarte Levy

11/11/08

Dear Mr Obama..

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Now that you're President-Elect of the United States, I thought I'd just share a few thoughts with you, mainly about Jon Burge. Now, your celebration party last night just happened to be in Chicago, where I wonder if you know that Jon Burge has been committed for trial for the torture of prisoners in custody when he was a police officer in that city.

From the 70s to the 90s, black African-American men were routinely tortured into making confessions and at the head of that torture ring was Jon Burge. Mr Obama, since so many people are hailing you as the history-making first black president of the United States, will you be doing anything about the fact that so many black African-Americans are on death row in various states of your fine country? And Mr Obama, what do you think of the numbers of children under the age of 18, who have been sent to prison in the United States with a sentence of Life without the prospect of parole?

What do you think about the fact that your country is one of the very few in the civilised world that still has the death penalty? On Tv, they keep playing that soulful blues song, "A Change is Gonna Come," and showing Jesse Jackson with tears streaming down his face. They're interviewing black people all over America who are just delirious that a black guy is gonna be president. They're saying that 96% of American black voters voted for you. And I bet they're hoping that you are going to make changes for the many many poor black folks in the USA. Will you, Mr Obama? Or was the "black" ticket your passport to the White House?

You may be a black guy, but I do wonder if that is the only thing you have in common with the man in a housing project, descended from slaves, who hasn't got health insurance and cannot get a hip replacement operation. I do hope not, Mr Obama. For me, it doesn't matter what colour your skin is. What will you do as president for the millions of poor, sick and unemployed people of your country? What will you do for all those black African-Americans sitting in their cells on death row?

Maddie, Joana and criminal investigation - the hidden truth

http://sosmaddie.dhblogs.be/

4/11/08

SOS Madeleine McCann

"Maddie, Joana and criminal investigation - The Hidden Truth," is the chosen theme for a conference debate with anthropologist and criminologist Barra da Costa, moderated by Professor Carlos Fernandes of the University of Aveiro.

The conference will take place on November 8th, at 9.30pm, in the small auditorium of the Figueira da Foz Centre for the Arts and Exhibitions.

Very controversial because of his position on the Madeleine McCann case, Barra da Costa, former PJ inspector, is the author of a book that carries the same title as the conference.

'Antoine de Brugerolle de Freysinette was like a son to Stéphane Bourcelin.

Restaurant, "Le Bon Croûton."

Stéphane Bourcelin is the boss of the restaurant where Antoine's mother Alexandrine worked for two years. He got to know Antoine really well, spending a great deal of time with him when he came to the restaurant with his mother.

Le Post 16/10/08

Stéphane's interview with Le Post on the subject of his relationship with Antoine.

"I am terribly upset, I'm not doing well," Stéphane Bourcelin, boss of "Le Bon Croûton," restaurant in Isoirre (Puy-de-Dôme repeated this Thursday to the Post.

The person who, from the start of the "case" has said that he considers the child to be "like a son," is the former employer of Alexandrine, Antoine's mother. She worked with him for nearly two years, before going on sick leave on August 13th last.

Stéphane Bourcelin learned of Antoine's disappearance on September 11th, the evening his disappearance was officially announced: "Alex called me and told me "Antoine has gone."

His apartment was searched on September 16th, his "computer and all of Antoine's things," were seized.

This Thursday morning it was his mother's house that was searched.

Although not suspected, he preferred to appoint a lawyer: Me Gilles-Jean Portejoie, who tells the Post: "My client is fed up with being in the spotlight.

To the Post, Stéphane Bourcelin, who doesn't have a life since the disappearance, expresses himself.

How are you?

"Very very bad. I haven't been sleeping for over a month now. I'm not eating. I have lost 10kg. I am very stressed. I am covered in eczema plaques. This morning, I went to the doctor again. He has put me on anti-depressants."

Are you still working?

"I don't go there very much, and I have no wish to. So, the restaurant isn't doing well. And with all that, there are fewer clients. It is difficult."

What relationship do you have with Antoine?

"He is like a son to me. For two years, he was in my restaurant every day. I knew him very well. I am very attached to him. I miss him a lot."

"What did he do in your bar?

"He watched TV, he hung out around the place, he played with other children. As his mother did not want a child-minder, he was always with us. Sometimes, he watched DVDs with me, at the back of the restaurant, so that he was not underfoot during serving."

What do you think of this disappearance?

"I find it hard to believe that Antoine would leave on his own. I keep hearing that he is very resourceful, but I don't actually agree."

Why?

"He was four and a half when he arrived and he didn't speak. He was very shy. Afterwards, he made progress. But well, he always forgot something: his jacket, his shoes, his stuff...like all 6 year-old kids."

What relationship do you have with Antoine's mother?

"We had a brief relationship when we first met, but it has been over for ages. I put her up the first summer that we worked together. She didn't have an apartment. Later, she got her apartment and we carried on working together. With her ups and downs, she is a very hard-working girl with a very bad temper."

What is the atmosphere like in Issoire?

"They're all talking constantly about Antoine. Nobody knows what happened. We hear all sorts of things. As I knew the child, I feel like I'm being watched all the time. I don't have a life any more. My mother's house was searched this morning. That was a shock to her. It shouldn't be forgotten that I am not there for nothing."

Antoine's grandmother, Cécile Grugerolle de Fraysinette, has been constitutes a civil party. Me Gilbert Collard is representing her.

In Le Post see also:

- Disparition d'Antoine: "La priorité, c'est chercher mon gosse"
- Disparition d'Antoine: où en est l'enquête?
- "On cherche Antoine sous terre, dans les caves, chez les gens"

Le Post 16/10/08

Information concerning the above:

coach@lepost.fr

Antoine, the forgotten child.

Georges Moréas 19/10/08

The former boss of the RG wrote a little black book about Sarkozy, who himself, sent his investigators to investigate the investigators who were investigating Besancenot (Presidential candidate in 2007 election.)
The Bourse plays yo-yo , the traders tie themselves in knots, they whistle the Marseillaise...Ah yes! There is no news of little Antoine.

Double standards.

a) On a May evening in 2007, the national director of the PJ receives a call on his mobile phone: "A child has disappeared..." From the next day, important people from the world of politics and the judiciary are on the spot, followed by a pack of journalists from all over the world. The case becomes Number One for the press, in Europe, in the United States...Before the cameras, the mother makes a plea, "to those who have done this." Specialists from Scotland Yard come to help the local investigators. In total, 150 police officers are mobilised. Two days later, the PJ director officially announces to the media: "It is an abduction". A support fund is set up on the internet and rich business men rush to the aid of the family.

That was in Portugal. Madeleine McCann, little Maddie, who disappeared on Thursday May 3rd 2007, at around 10pm, while her parents were dining with friends.

b) At practically the same time, that Thursday, September 11th 2008, Alexandrine Brugerolle de Fraissinette called the gendarmerie. "My son has disappeared", she told them. But hey! Alexandrine is 23 years old, she doesn't have much education, she is a lone parent and she works as a waitress at a restaurant in Issoire, a town of 13,000 inhabitants in Puy-de-Dôme. I am afraid the PJ's national director's phone stayed quiet that evening. At the end of the following day, in the absence of any elected official, any government representative, 80 officers of the gendarmerie (La Montagne) set out to help their colleagues in their search.

The facts: Alexandrine and Sébastien, her lover, decided to go out to a restaurant for dinner. It is not known whether it was Antoine who requested it (He is only 6 and a half, but he already displays a certain character.) or if it was a punishment, but the child stayed at home, with the two dogs. The apartment where he lives with his mother is in the Issoire town centre, at 1 Rue Des Fours. The restaurant, The Saigon, where Alexandrine and Sébastien have dinner, is at 45 Rue du Palais, three minutes walk away.

When his mother comes back, at around 9.30pm, Antoine isn't there. No mess, no evidence of intrusion.

The investigators think runaway. Then it is said that the child allegedly left the house carrying a little backpack and a packet of biscuits. And the Clermont-Ferrand proscutor of the Republic, Jean-Yves Coquillat, doesn't put the abduction-alert plan into operation.

There is something unvarying in disappearances of children or adults: it is that at the beginning, there is always a refusal to envisage the worst. This is true for the family and it is true for the investigators. Thus, searches start slowly and it is only in the early hours of the morning that things start to become serious. The police coordinate their efforts. They criss-cross the town. Others comb the outskirts of Issoire...They call in the dogs who, "mark," an area of ponds. They bring in a team of divers. They even bring in a helicopter equipped with a thermal camera, but given the weather, it will only be operational on the Sunday afternoon. During this time, some men go down into the Issoire sewers. Meanwhile, another team is engaged in a classic criminal investigation: looking for evidence in the home, interviewing witnesses, searches...

The investigation: Finally, three days after the child's disappearance, the prosecutor decides on the opening of a criminal investigation for the abduction and illegal confinement of a minor under the age of 15. He states: "The more time goes by, the more the idea of a runaway loses credibility and I am not very optimistic." Soon, the press takes up the suspicions weighing on Antoine's mother, and adds: "the red-haired woman...the seductress....the lone mother...., she created a prison..." The descriptions are of the same ilk for Sébastien: druggie...., violent...., he beats Antoine up..." So much gossip amplified by the prosecutor's innuendo.




On Wednesday September 24th, Alexandrine, her partner and six of their acquaintances are taken into custody. The apartment is again taken over by forensic technicians. They sound the walls, the parquet tiles are lifted, places are gone over with a fluorescent light. All that is found is two small drops of blood, tiny, near the switch, in Antoine's bedroom.

Finally, everyone is released, except Sébastien, who is imprisoned for something else. One of the leading investigators confesses: "We need to go back to the beginning..."

The reconstruction (subject to change): One month before the tragedy, Alexandrine was working as a waitress at the Au Bon Croûton restaurant, owned by Stéphane Bourcelin. They had an affair when she was hired in 2006. It was she who broke it off and contrary to gossip, there are no other known liaisons, until her meeting Sébastien in July 2008, at the time when Antoine is on holiday with his great-grandmother.

In the restaurant business, the 35 hour week is unknown. She works hard. Long days, sometimes without a day off in the week. Towards mid-August, she breaks down and her doctor tells her to take time off work. Stéphane does not appreciate this, especially as he can no longer see Antoine, because he seems to have taken a liking to this little kid. He often played with him, or they watched videos together. He even offered him a Playstation. And suddenly, he is deprived of Antoine and of his....waitress, because Alexandrine and Sébastien have other projects. They want to get married, start a real family. Sébastien even envisages "adopting" Antoine.

Things seem to be sorting themselves out for Alexandrine and her son. Perhaps the end of hardship..Until that famous evening. Today, we can reconstruct the events with far less risk of error than at the beginning. First of all the rumours, according to which no one allegedly saw the child for around a fortnight, are without foundation. In fact, two days after Antoine's disappearance, the gendarmes recorded the statement of a witness who stated having seen him, at his home, coming out of the bathroom.

On September 11th, a neighbour heard the child playing in the apartment, at around 7.15pm. His bedroom light was on. Later in the evening, her attention was drawn to a car stopping at the foot of the building. Then there were footsteps on the stairs. A little later, the car took off at a cracking speed.

Antoine did not leave with a small bag and a packet of biscuits as has been said, but with a large bag belonging to Sébastien. A black (or navy blue) bag nearly as tall as himself, in which clothes must have been packed, clothes where were not found in his wardrobe. His soft toy, a little cat, which was always dragged around with him, also disappeared.

So, what happened on the evening of Thursday September 11th? Did Antoine's mother chop her child into small pieces, which she then crammed into bin bags, as hinted at by a newspaper, which I will not even name?

Or taking advantage of the child's being alone, someone came to find him? And with what intentions?

The president of the Esperanza Association (blog about Antoine's disappearance) Madame Lydie Fontenil, wants to hold onto this possibility. "There is really nothing new," she told me on the telephone, "but little clues allow us to maintain hope." We should listen to what she says, because she is a woman of experience. For years she has devoted herself to searching for missing children. And she knows that sometimes it ends well. When Antoine disappeared, with his mother's agreement, she set up a blog devoted to him. She responds to numerous telephone calls, she puts pressure on "her" volunteers (she is looking for new ones) she shakes up her information network, she supports Alexandrine etc. "I have lost six kilos," she smilingly confessed to me.

A few days ago, in the little station, in the area of Paris where I take the RER, there was a missing person poster. It was about a fifteen year-old teenager who lives in Nantes. I don't know about you, but in the Paris area, I have never seen a poster about Antoine.

That is why I wanted to write these lines. I know this is only a blog...

It is said that women are more sensitive than men, above all as soon as we are talking about children...The two ministers directly responsible for this investigation are women. Are they at least aware? In any case, no one has heard from them.

When a couple of tourists were kidnapped by pirates off the coast of Djibouti, the President of the Republic took things in hand. This same president, when he was Minister for the Interior, had moved heaven and earth to find little Estelle Mouzin.*

A little six and a half year old boy has been missing for 38 days - and the silence of those people, those who hold power, is deafening.

*See previous posts on this blog.

Marcos Aragão Correia, Léonor Cipriano's lawyer.

Marcos Aragão Correia, has been making very serious allegations in the courtroom at Faro, in the context of the trial of the five Portuguese police inspectors, involved in the alleged torture of Léonor Cipriano. He has alleged that Leandro Silva, husband of Léonor and Joana's step-father, knew a week beforehand that Goncalo Amaral was going to be dismissed from his job as coordinator of the investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance. He has also alleged that British police carried out an investigation into Amaral's background and discovered some questionable details about Amaral's private life: for example that Dr Amaral beat his wife, Sofia, while under the influence of alcohol.

Marcos Aragão Correia, is the lawyer who set up the searches at the Arade Dam, employing divers to hunt for the body of Madeleine McCann, initially reported by him as being the result of a tip-off from some underworld criminals. More recently, Marcos Aragão Correia, has said that the searches at the dam were inspired by a "vision" he had about the Maddie case.

SOS Madeleine McCann "Marcos Aragão Correia has a "vision" of the Cipriano case."

In the present trial of the five PJ inspectors, it would appear that Marcos Aragão Correia is more concerned with discrediting Dr Amaral than of dealing with the matter at hand.

According to the Portuguese newspaper, Correio da Manha, Marcos Aragão Correia, has admitted receiving money from Metodo 3, the private detective agency hired by Kate and Gerry McCann, to help finance the searches at the Arade Dam. In today's copy, he denies that he is now being paid by anyone for representing Léonor in the present case being heard in Faro. The translation below is taken from the Joana Morais blog. (Link to Joana's blog on the right under, "Blogs of interest".)

"They've asked me to get in the Case"

The private detectives agency hired by the McCann couple asked Marcos Aragão Correia to enter in the 'Joana Case'. It is the lawyer, himself, who admits that Metodo3 ordered him to do 'an investigation' to the outlines regarding the [alleged] torture accusation of Joana's mother, by the PJ - the target, between the 5 inspectors, was evident: Gonçalo Amaral. Regardless, the [liar, pardon], the lawyer guarantees that now no one is paying him.

The private detective agency, contacted yesterday by CM, denied any connection whatsoever to the lawyer. The payment was also denied, even though Aragão Correia has already admitted that he received money to pay the 'expenses' when he made the searches to find Maddie's corpse in the dam of Bravura, in Lagos. The lawyer from Madeira [Portuguese Island], told he had a supernatural indication to the whereabouts of the body of the British child and that he had gone to the Algarve at his own expenses.

He entered in contact with the McCann Detectives, which made him a request: "They have asked me to try to get involved in the Case Joana to obtain statements from Leonor and her brother and to try to understand if there was torture, nothing else", he guarantees. This at a time where suspicions have been raised that by defending Leonor, he is being paid by someone who is interested that Gonçalo Amaral is convicted, precisely because he was the Coordinator of the investigation to the Case Maddie, which pointed towards the involvement of the parents in the crime. "I don't get paid in pounds or in euros. I am here for principles, and my objective is to set free Leonor."


Source: Correio da Manhã, by Rui Pando Gomes

Joana Morais.

(Updated) Leonor Cipriano: Fellow inmate says she was beaten up in prison.

http://sosmaddie.dhblogs.be/

30/10/08

"We beat her up (Leonor) because nobody likes child killers."

"The bruises on Leanor Cipriano's face were not done by the inspectors (PJ)...she was well and truly pasted in prison after her arrival. In prison, nobody likes child killers," states a former fellow inmate of Joana's mother, stressing that after that assault, "Leonor had favourable treatment on the part of the director." The fellow inmate goes further and maintains that there were never any bruises on Joana's face or body even after the assault she was the object of at the Odemira Prison, contradicting the truth of the photos presented to the Faro court.

The revelations made to SMM, according to this former inmate, are not new, but have not been taken into account by the PJ: "When I found out what they had in mind (Leonor and the director) I sent a letter to Faro, but I didn't sign it, because I still had time to serve and I didn't want any problems."

If, since the assaults which she alleged she was the victim of, Leonor has always stated that Gonçalo Amaral. the former coordinator, had never touched her, after the arrival of the lawyer Marcos Aragão, she states the complete opposite, changing her version several times in the course of the trial.

Update: 31/10/08

A case with several dangerous connections.

In the course of the recent court sessions, a former head of prison officers has meanwhile confirmed as abnormal, the behaviour of the director and her strange relationship with Léonor: according to him, the head of the establishment allegedly even suggested that he should change the contents of a report written about Léonor Cipriano's return from the PJ at Faro with a few red marks on her face.

The head prison officer, Antonio Maia, who has been heard as a witness, indicated that he was on duty on October 15th and that Léonor Cipriano, on her return to prison, confirmed to him that she had indeed fallen down the stairs after her interrogation in the PJ building in Faro, because, quoting Joana's mother, she had experienced dizziness after several hours without food. Those are the statements, recorded in Antonio Maia's report, that the director, Ana Maria Calado, allegedly suggested that he change.

To be continued...

Madeleine McCann - New book by journalists Hernâni Carvalho and Luis Maia, "Maddie: Neither Truth nor Consequence."

http://sosmaddie.dhblogs.be/

29/10/08

Maddie : Ni vérité ni conséquence

A new book from journalists Hernâni Carvalho and Luis Maia, entitled, "Maddie: Neither Truth nor Consequence," returns to the most significant moments in the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the little British girl the authorities have decided to no longer look for.

The two journalists have already published a book about the first 129 days of the investigation.

"Kate and Gerry are a complementary pair, a typical product of the second half of the twentieth century. He, the child-man, who needs to be directed by someone he trusts. She, the iron lady, who needs to control, because fears being controlled by other people. Curiously, this is the profile of many couples who need to resort to assisted conception. Also, curiously, it is the profile of a couple who regularly indulge in perversions," the journalists write.

Hernâni Carvalho, one of the journalists, who has received the highest commendations for his work, has been to war zones like Bosnia, Timor and Afghanistan. Nowadays, he presents brief news items on crime on one of the most popular Portuguese television channels, TVI.


SOS Madeleine McCann 29/10/08

Dogs Don't Lie: new site on the brilliant skills of dogs like Eddie and Keela

The above and other merchandise will be available to buy from the site.

Dogs Don't Lie

Articles include:

Cadaver dog helps bring peace to families of victims.

The English sniffer dogs that are helping in the hunt for Madeleine

Eddie The Crime Dog To Help In Hunt For Missing 911 Dispatcher

Eddie joins Maddy hunt

On scent of success: sniffer dog Keela earns more than her Chief Constable

Families of the Victims Tortured by Chicago Detectives Rejoice at Arrest of Jon Burge.

Jon Burge appeared in court at the Federal Building in downtown Chicago this morning. A trial date has been set for May 11th next year.

"A 25-year fight to bring Jon Burge and detectives who tortured at least 150 black men into confession to justice reaches a crucial stage."

Alternet 27/10/08

I am copying and pasting the excellent article from Alternet. It's rather long, but worth reading in its entirety.

"By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on October 27, 2008

It began as a dirty open secret and is now Chicago lore: From the 1970s into the 1990s, African American men in the city of Chicago were routinely arrested, taken into police custody, and tortured, during interrogations lasting hours on end. An estimated 150 black men endured abuse that included savage beatings, suffocation with bags and typewriter covers, and in many instances, electrical shocks applied to their genitals. The goal was to secure confessions, and more often than not, it worked, whether the suspect was guilty or not.

At the head of Chicago's police torture ring was Jon Burge, a decorated Vietnam veteran who once made his name for himself as a young cop on the beat on the South Side of Chicago. As Police Commander, first at Area Three on Chicago's North side and then at Area Two on the South, Burge is said to have instituted some of the same techniques he saw deployed in Vietnam, to brutal effect. Forced into early retirement over the torture of a man named Andrew Wilson in 1993, Jon Burge has long been virtually synonymous with racism and police brutality in Chicago. Yet his name remains mostly unfamiliar to the rest of the country, in no small part because neither he nor his subordinates have ever been held accountable for their alleged crimes. Until now.

On Tuesday, October 21, Federal agents arrested Burge, now 60 years old, at his home in Tampa, Florida. This Monday, he will be arraigned at a Chicago courtroom, where he will not only face charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, he will come face to face with activists, family members and loved ones of men who, decades ago, were tortured under his command.

"They should apologize for what they did to him."

Carolyn Johnson was at her home in Chicago the morning Jon Burge was arrested. "I was doing my hair and a news flash came on -- and when the news flash came on, it showed Burge being arrested outside his house in Tampa, Florida!" Excitement creeps into her voice as she tells the story over the phone two days later -- "I called a million people," she says. After all, it was news she's been waiting to hear for more than 15 years.

Carolyn Johnson's son Marcus Wiggins was only 13 years old when he was arrested following a gang-related shooting and taken to an Area Three police station on the city's North side. The year was 1991. Jon Burge was the presiding detective commander at the station. According to Carolyn, Marcus was brought into the interrogation room without a lawyer or other adult present. "They told him to put his 'black ass' in the corner." There, he was beaten with a 15-inch rod and then, and then, the police officers brought out a black box. The box had electrical wires with alligator clips on the ends and some sort of switch that unleashed an electrical current.

In 1993, Marcus filed a lawsuit against the City of Chicago. In his deposition, Marcus described what happened next:

Examination: What happened after he turned the switch?

Wiggins: He told me to put my hands on the table.

Q: And did you do that?

A: Yes.

Q: And then what happened?

A: And then he put the things on my hand.

Q: Was the box making a humming noise before he put the things on your hand?

A: Yes.

…

Q: What happened when he put the things on your hands?

A: They started -- my hands started burning, feeling like it was being burned. I was -- I was shaking and my -- and my jaws got tight and my eyes felt they went blank … It felt like I was spinning … It felt like my jaws was like -- they was -- I can't say the word. It felt like my jaws was sucking in … I felt like I was going to die.

According to Carolyn, it was Jon Burge himself who provided the officers with the box. "He let them do it," she says. "He was there."

Marcus's conviction was thrown out by a juvenile court when it was determined that he had been coerced into confessing, and in August of 1996, his lawsuit was settled for $95,000, paid for by the City of Chicago. But a few years later, he was arrested again, by the same officers, for another gang-related crime. He is still behind bars.

For years, Carolyn Johnson has kept a record of each of the officers involved in her son's case: Jon Burge, John Byrne Anthony Maslanka, John Paladino, and James O'Brien. "I have the names," she says. "I have the names in my sleep. I dream about them." As far as she's concerned, even with Burge now in custody, "It's not over yet. Not while those [other] detectives are out there on the streets and my son is in jail … They should apologize for what they did to him."

The case of Andrew Wilson

Jon Burge might have gotten away with torture altogether if it weren't for the case of Andrew Wilson. Wilson was arrested on Valentines Day, 1982, for the killing of two police officers, William Fahey and Richard O'Brien. That night, after spending hours being interrogated at Area Two, where he ultimately confessed to the crime, he was admitted to Chicago's Mercy Hospital with multiple injuries, including lacerations to his face, bruises to his chest, and second degree burns to one thigh. After being convicted and sentenced to death the following year, the Illinois Supreme Court overturned Wilson's conviction, based on the fact that he had been apparently abused by police. The opinion cited Wilson's testimony at a pretrial hearing, where he described being "punched, kicked, smothered with a plastic bag, electrically shocked and forced against a hot radiator throughout the day until he confessed," according to the Chicago Tribune. Wilson was convicted a second time for the same crime, in 1988, and given a life sentence. In 1989 he filed a civil suit against Jon Burge and four other police officers.

In just one of an exhaustive number of articles on Chicago's police torture scandal published by the alternative weekly the Chicago Reader, reporter John Conroy described the way evidence of Wilson's torture played out in the courtroom. "More telling than the Mercy Hospital records … were photographs of strange U-shaped scabs on Wilson's ears, as if a miniature crocodile had dined there," Conroy wrote. "Wilson contended that the scabs had been made by alligator clips attached by wires to a black box, a device that generated electricity and seemed to resemble a modified army field telephone. He also said that the series of parallel scars on his chest and the large scar on his right thigh were the result of having been held against a radiator while he was being shocked."

During the course of two civil rights trials, lawyers for Commander Burge, Detective John Yucaitis, and Detective Patrick O'Hara offered various explanations for the wounds. The marks on the convict's ears, they said, were indeed inflicted by alligator clips. They tried to convince two juries that Wilson had found a roach clip in the police lockup or in the jail and had inflicted the marks himself in order to support his fantastic tale … [T]he officers offered contradictory explanations for the wounds on Wilson's chest and thigh. At the first trial, Area Two detectives claimed that Wilson could not have been burned because he had been interrogated in interview room two, where the radiator didn't work, and they produced an eminent physician as expert witness who said the marks were abrasions, not burns ... At the second civil rights trial the detectives ditched their burn expert and argued that Wilson had been interrogated in interview room one where the radiator did work, that the marks were indeed burns, and that the convict had inflicted them on himself. To back up that story they produced jailhouse informant William Coleman, an Englishman with nine aliases who had served time in England, Ireland, Germany, Holland, Monaco, Hong Kong, and the United States for charges including perjury, fraud, theft, manslaughter, blackmail, and possession of cocaine with intent to deliver.

After the first civil trial ended in a hung jury, Wilson's attorneys began receiving anonymous letters, "seemingly written by someone who worked at Area Two, that indicated that Burge's electrical devices were by no means a product of Wilson's imagination. The anonymous writer directed the lawyers to a man named Melvin Jones, then incarcerated at Cook County Jail." Jones, it would turn out, claimed to have been electroshocked by Burge less than two weeks before Wilson's interrogation. In fact, he had described the treatment at a hearing seven years earlier. "At that hearing," Conroy wrote, "Jones had said that Burge tried to intimidate him by naming two other men who had writhed on the floor in pain when they were shocked." The two men were in turn tracked down, "and they led to others, and soon word went around various prisons that someone was interested in torture victims from Area Two and from Area Three."

Although the detectives were eventually cleared of any charges, mounting pressure led to an internal investigation by the Chicago Police Department's Office of Professional Standards. In 1990, it issued a report that found that torture had indeed been carried out under Burge -- torture that "was not limited to the usual beatings, but went into such esoteric areas as psychological techniques and planned torture." Three years later, Burge was forced to leave the Chicago Police Department.

The Death Row Ten
Stanley Howard was in his early 20s when he was arrested for the murder of a man named Oliver Ridgell on the South Side of Chicago. No physical evidence linked him to the crime, only eyewitness testimony. On November 2, 1984, he was brought to the Area Two police station, where Jon Burge was stationed at the time. There, he says he was brutally beaten by police officers James Lotito, Ronald Boffo, and Robert Dwyer and Sergeant John Byrne. As he would later describe:

"While they were beating me, they were spoon-feeding me information about the case and asking me was I ready to confess. When I kept explaining to them that I didn't commit the crime, Boffo left the room and came back with a plastic bag. After placing the bag over my head, Lotito began to choke me with it -- trying to suffocate me with it -- as the other two began to punch and kick me again."

After hours of interrogation and torture, Stanley Howard signed a confession. According to Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, "the next day, Howard told a paramedic who examined him at the Cook County jail that the confession had been beaten out of him. The paramedic, Wayne Kinzie, noted bruises and abrasions on Howard's left leg and chest but could not say what had caused them."

Stuck with a "dumb attorney and a very smart overzealous prosecutor," Howard was nonetheless convicted, almost wholly on the basis of his confession, in a trial presided over by a judge who was himself a former Area Two police officer. In 1987, Stanley Howard was sentenced to death.

Years later, while on death row, Stanley Howard came into contact with other prisoners who told him that they, too, had been brutalized at the hands of Burge's police detectives. Among the abuse some of the men shared in common were suffocation, electrocution, Russian roulette, and being beaten over the heads with telephone books. The men decided to call themselves the Death Row Ten, and in the summer of 1998, they contacted activists from the Campaign to End the Death Penalty in Chicago to ask them to start advocating for them on the outside. (A few months later, Frank Bounds, one of the founding members of the Death Row 10, died in prison from untreated cancer.)

At the same time, that September, a death row prisoner named Anthony Porter with an IQ of 51 was scheduled to die in Illinois's execution chamber, when he was granted a last-minute stay of execution. In a story that would become famous, journalism students from Northwestern University began looking into his case, and shortly after the inauguration of Republican Governor George Ryan, exposed damning evidence that Porte was an innocent man. "I was caught completely off-guard," Governor Ryan later told The Nation. " … That mentally retarded man came within two days of execution, and but for those students Anthony Porter would have been dead and buried. I felt jolted into re-examining everything I believed in." George Ryan declared a moratorium on all executions and on January 10, 2003, he shut down Illinois's death row completely, commuting the sentences of all its prisoners to life, and pardoning Madison Hobley, Leroy Orange, Aaron Patterson, and Stanley Howard, all members of the Death Row 10, on account of actual innocence. Despite his pardon, Stanley Howard was never freed, remaining in prison, on separate charges.

Stanley Howard's fiancee, Michelle Martin had just woken up on Tuesday morning when she heard the news about Burge's arrest. "I was laying in bed and when I heard about it I jumped up and started screaming," she laughs. "I was so happy because it's about time -- all those men he beat and tortured." Martin lives on the South Side of Chicago and has known Stanley "forever." "He was my childhood crush," she says. She was just 15 when he was arrested.

Like others in the neighborhood, Martin says she heard about the torture in Stanley's case early on, and although she would hear about other cases of people being tortured by Chicago cops, the scale of it remained a mystery. "We knew it was true [that people had been tortured], but we didn't know to what what extent." As years passed, Jeanette Johnson, Stanley's mother, worked alongside local activists to get the truth out about his case. She, too, was jubilant at the news. "I called Stanley's mom," Michelle said, "And she was like, 'We finally got him!"

Hundreds of family members waiting for justice

Virginia Clements woke up early on Tuesday morning to take her insulin. "And I hear them say over the radio, 'Attention: we're in the process of arresting Jon Burge!'" Then, she laughs, "at about 9:00 my daughter called and she said, 'Did you hear -- Burge?' and I said, yeah, Burge!'"

Virginia's son, Mark, was one of the earliest documented victims of Chicago police torture. Arrested in 1981 for supposedly setting fire to an apartment building, he was only 16 when he was tried (as an adult) and sentenced to multiple life sentences. His conviction rested on a confession signed after more than ten hours of questioning, during which he was reportedly beaten and tortured by one police officer -- Detective John McCann -- and interrogated by Detective Daniel McWeeny. Both detectives have been implicated in the Burge torture scandal.

Like Carolyn Johnson, Virginia Clements has been waiting to see Burge behind bars for years. "Everybody's been called," she says, including his daughter, who, she says, "is as old as he has been in there." She had not yet reached her first birthday when Mark was arrested. Now she's in her late 20s.

Mark Clements will turn 44 this year. After being bounced from prison to prison -- "he was sent to Pontiac, then to Joliet, then to Statesville" -- he eventually ended up at Menard Correctional Center, in Chester, Illinois, which used to house death row prisoners. "I hit the top of the roof when I found out he went to Menard," Virginia says. "Menard is like a mental institute." But now she is optimistic, and not just because of Burge's arrest. After years of frustration, Mark just got a new lawyer, about six months ago. "They're gonna have to give him a new trial," she says. "because they don't have any evidence."

No automatic justice for those behind bars

When Jon Burge enters the courtroom Monday morning, activists and family members who have spent years fighting for justice for Chicago's police torture victims will be waiting to greet him. "We're encouraging people to come to court and pack the room," says Julien Ball, an organizer with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "Hopefully we will send the message that we want to see this guy in jail." Burge is being charged with two counts of obstruction of justice (which carry up to 20 years apiece) and one count of perjury (five years) over false statements he made in response to a lawsuit brought forth by pardoned death row prisoner and torture victim Madison Hobley in 2003. If he is convicted, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars.

As recently as two years ago, it seemed hard to imagine that Burge could ever be brought to justice. When special prosecutors were assigned to investigate Chicago's police torture scandal in 2002, it took until June of 2006 for them to release a report, nearly 300 pages long, that concluded that a statute of limitations barred any prosecutions. The report, which cost taxpayers millions of dollars, was labeled by activists "a $7 million whitewash."

"It was clearly an attempt to close the book on this scandal," says Ball. "But now it is also clear that the attempt failed. The facts repudiated all of their conclusions. The special prosecutor said that they couldn't bring charges because of this statute of limitations … but obviously [U.S. Attorney] Patrick Fitzgerald did not feel there was any obstruction." Indeed, Fitzgerald, who not only brought corruption charges against Governor George Ryan shortly after he left office, but who also is famous for his investigation of the Valerie Plame scandal, is now leading the charge to hold Burge accountable for his crimes. "Jon Burge shamed his uniform and shamed his badge," Fitzgerald said at a press conference on Tuesday. Although Burge does not face charges for the torture itself, he said, "if people commit multiple crimes and you can't prosecute them for one, there's nothing wrong with prosecuting him for another. If Al Capone went down for taxes, that was better than him going down for nothing."

Of course, there are dozens of police officers who have yet to be held accountable for their roles in torturing suspects. But a number of them have been subpoenaed in the past several months in advance of Burge's arrest, and the case promises to lead to other prosecutions. "More investigation and more indictments must follow because it wasn't just Jon Burge," says Flint Taylor, an attorney with the People's Law Office in Chicago, who represents a number of Burge torture victims. "There was a series of detectives and sergeants under his command who also tortured in a serial manner and who have also lied under oath as Burge has."

In the meantime, family members and activists will continue to fight for those who remain imprisoned, an untold number of who are innocent. (Lawyers with the People's Law Center in Chicago have identified at least 25 prisoners who were tortured into giving confessions to crimes they didn't commit, but the number is probably much higher, says Ball.) As Jean Tillman, another mother of a Burge torture victim puts it, "there's no automatic justice for those guys behind bars." Nevertheless, as first steps go, this one, however long overdue, is huge. "It's incredibly significant," says Ball. "This is something that activists have been fighting for for 25 years."