Marcos Aragão Correia: the return

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Léonor Cipriano's lawyer, Marcos Aragão Correia, has seen the suspension imposed by the Bar Association lifted, but he must still face a disciplinary process for his actions in the Madeleine McCann case, but also in the context of the trial of the five PJ inspectors.

True to himself, the layer who also calls himself a medium, now accuses the presiding judge of the court in Faro, Henrique Pavão, of having a "dangerous liaison," with Me António Cabrita, Gonçalo Amaral's defence lawyer.

Marcos Aragão Correia's accusations were made after his expulsion from the courtroom, following his suspension by the Conduct Committee of the Madère Bar Association. A complaint against the judge was lodged with the Senior Committee of Magistrates.

Marcos and the Maddie case.

On May 6th 2007, (3 days after Madeleine's disappearance) Marcos Aragão Correia stated that so-called sources in the underworld told him that Madeleine MCann had been raped and killed and that her body had been thrown into a "dark lake." Under pressure to identify his alleged sources, he ended up changing his version of the story and said he was a spiritualist, medium: after having participated in a spiritualists' meeting on the night of May 5th, the lawyer claims that he had a vision of a four year-old child "abducted, raped, killed and the her body thrown into a lake or a dam."

In October 2007, he claimed that he had sent a recorded letter from the island of Madiera to Rothley, addressed to the McCanns, apparently containing details, clues and crucial evidence in the case. He also claims that he informed the PJ in Funchal (Madiera)

In the same month, he announced that the famous letter never reached the hands of the McCanns, in spite of the fact that someone allegedly signed for its receipt.

In November 2007, he decided to take legal action against the Portuguese postal system, the CTT, accusing them of not having correctly delivered the letter to the McCanns. According to the lawyer, an officer of the postal services allegedly wrongfully signed the receipt for the letter, but his legal action was considered unfounded and he was sentenced to pay court costs, being a sum of 100 Euros.

In statements to the press, Marcos claims that he only wrote to the McCanns giving them the information, in the absence of a response on the part of the PJ to to information he claimed to have furnished in Madiera.

In December 2007, the liaison between the lawyer and the private detectives becomes obvious. It is then that he is going to become more insistent about his version regarding the presence of Maddie's body in the waters of the Arade Dam where he is going to pay British divers to probe the depths.

Presented in the British media as a Good Samaritan, the lawyer stated that he paid the 1250 Euros daily expenses for the divers from the Dive Time Society of Lagos, with money from Metodo 3.

If the Good Samaritan doesn't have a sense of the ridiculous, he has, however, the concept of the value of the media and he finds ways to alert the British and Portuguese media so that they are present at key moments in the searches: first of all he brings from the water, an ordinary piece of rope which he is going to use to put across the image of a child tied up. After this are black plastic bags containing animal bones, but of which he is going to put across the message that it could be the bones of a child's hand. Finally, after the intervention of the PJ, he will admit that it was really the bones of cats.

He goes as far as stating that he is 99% certain that Madeleine's body will be found in the dam.

In spite of the intervention of the Portuguese authorities confirming that they really did come from a litter of kittens, the meagre findings of Marcos Aragão Correia - at least this is what he stated to the press - will be sent to Barcelona where Metodo 3 had specialists ready to carry out examinations. The results were never disclosed because, as it became obvious, there was nothing to say, confirming once again that the lawyer's only objective was to feed doubt about the official investigation.

Today, Marcos Aragão continues his work. He has become lawyer for Léonor Cipriano, even if his main objective remains the former coordinator of the investigation into the death and disappearance of Madeleine McCann: Goncalo Amaral.

SOS Madeleine McCann: 24/01/09

Cipriano case - Joana is dead

17/01/09

Joana is dead (*)

"There is only one truth in that statement, Joana is dead, the rest is no more than a tissue of lies."

Four years ago, a child was killed at the hands of her mother and her uncle. her crime was to surprise them having sex. She was called Joana and, in addition to the fact of being negelcted by her mother, she was the victim of sexual abuse.

Yesterday, from the Odemira prison, her mother, legally declared responsible for her death, signed a statement in which she confirmed such death, attributing sole responsibility to her brother.

There is only one truth in that statement: Joana is dead. The rest is no more than a tissue of lies from someone who was declared a psychopath and who, from the first moment, lied to the police.

Unlike other murdered children, those responsible have been brought to justice and sentenced for the heinous crime.

For Joana's mother, it is not enough to ask for forgiveness, she must stop lying and tell the truth. That will be the moment of true redemption and Joana's soul will rest in peace.

Joana suffered in life and at the moment of her violent death. It has not been possible to avoid such sacrifices, but we have contributed to justice being done.

It is because of this case and others that we are proud to have been police officers, to be able to look at the sky and say: by the grace of God...I was a police officer.

Gonçalo Amaral

(*) Opinion piece by Gonçalo Amaral, published in the Portuguese daily, Correio da Manha

Note: Léonor Cipriano has had several versions about the disappearance and death of her daughter since September 2004. More recently, she said she did not know what had happened to her daughter Joana. Further, she has even stated that she believed that Joana was still alive.

These statements were made in the Faro courtroom, before judges, the jury and the public at the trial of the five PJ inspectors.

This is only an umpteenth version...Now, a few versions later, Joana's mother reveals that Joana was killed by her uncle, João Cipriano.

SOS Madeleine McCann

The Cipriano case: Joana was battered to death by her uncle.

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17/01/09

The new witness statement has been written by Marcos Aragão.

Yesterday, the lawyer, Marcos Aragão Correia revealed to the press, outside the trial of the five PJ inspectors, a document signed by Léonor Cipriano, in which Joana's mother accuses her brother, João Cipriano, of being the sole perpetrator of the little girl's murder.

In this eight page document, written by hand by the lawyer, Léonor Cipriano explains that her brother convinced her to sell Joana, but that "the people didn't have the money promised (an amount Léonor has not revealed) and João did not hand over the girl.

(To read the complete document click here for the photos or the PDF).

This umpteenth version is, according to Marcos Aragão, "the true story," Léonor's witness statement recounting exactly what allegedly happened to her daughter Joana, who disappeared in September 2004.

"When Joana left the house, the intention was to hand her over to the people and simulate a kidnapping," the lawyer states, explaining that her uncle, João Cipriano, had taken along the little girl's clothes in a large bag.

According to Marcos Aragão, Joana allegedly heard the whole discussion between João and the buyers, threatening her uncle, "that she was going to tell everything," after which, "he allegedly started battering her, finishing up killing her."

According to this new witness statement, written by Marcos Aragão, Léonor was not present at the time of Joana's death but João Cipriano allegedly confessed his crime to her: when he came home, he tried to hide the murder, but, at Léonor's insistence, who allegedly detected traces of blood on her brother's trousers, João ended up admitting having killed Joana and having hidden the body in a place close to the house before burying it the next day.

Umpteenth version targets Gonçalo Amaral, the former coordinator.

It was outside the trial of the five PJ inspectors that Marcos Aragão Correia - the same lawyer who stated that he had a vision that Maddie's body was in the deep waters of the Arade Dam - chose to present the document to the press, stressing that Léonor, "decided to leave this out and say that she knew nothing," because of, "her brother's threats," but that the confession of her participation in Joana's murder was allegedly made, "under torture," when she was interviewed by the PJ inspectors.

The new version of the events surrounding Joana's death will, meanwhile, be used by Léonor's lawyer to point the finger at former inspector, Gonçalo Amaral, officer for the disappearance and death of Joana in 2004 and of Madeleine McCann in 2007.

In the document which the lawyer wrote and Léonor signed, the former inspector is accused of knowing the truth: "If Mr Amaral knows it, then why did he ask people to beat me up? Why?"

In statements to the Portuguese press, the former coordinator of the PJ's DIC in Portimao, contented himself with saying that Léonor Cipriano was already considered to be a psychopath (see the video by the psychologist Paulo Sargento) and that she was lying, stressing that Joana's mother, as well as her brother João were tried and convicted for Joana's murder, all "the rest was lies being put about."

Gonçalo Amaral's lawyer, António Cabrita, goes further and after having considered that the document presented by Marcos Aragão had no relevance to the ongoing trial against the five inspectors, stated that he did not believe it was Léonor's work, but rather the work of someone else: "an obvious manipulation of the prisoner for other purposes," notably the sullying of Gonçalo Amaral's image.

Review of Léonor's conviction must await the end of Amaral's trial.

The request for review of Léonor and João Cipriano's convictions will await the final result of the trial of the five PJ inspectors, accused of having committed acts of torture during an interrogation, the day after Léonor's confession in the presence of her lawyer at the time.

In November 2005, the two siblings were sentenced, respectively, to 20 years and four months in prison and 19 years and two months. In May 2008, the Supreme Court of Justice reduced the sentences to 16 years and eight months in prison.

SOS Madeleine McCann - The Cipriano case: Léonor changes her story once again and accuses the uncle of having killed Joana.

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16/01/09

Léonor Cipriano, mother of Joana, the little girl aged seven, who disappeared in the south of Portugal in December 2004, has once again changed her version of the facts, this time about the death of her daughter.

Tried and sentenced for Joana's murder, Léonor Cipriano is involved now in the trial of five Portuguese PJ inspectors accused by the Public Minister of having committed acts of torture against her.

Yesterday, as her lawyer, Marcos Aragão Correia, had elsewhere "predicted", on the occasion of his book launch, Léonor Cipriano accused Joana's uncle of having killed the child after having tried to sell her.

According to Léonor, in a document signed yesterday in prison, João Manuel Domingos Cipriano allegedly killed Joana after having failed to deliver the child to her purchasers.

Today, at around 4pm (3pm in Portugal) Marcos Aragão Correia, Léonor's lawyer, accompanied by Joana's step-father, António Leandro David Da Silva, will read a press release, at the entrance to the Faro court where the trial of the PJ inspectors is taking place. After the press release, the document, a total of eight pages, will be handed to the Public Minister.

A case revived for the advantage of the Madeleine McCann case.

After lying around for several years in the drawers of the Public Ministry, during which time, different prosecutors have never succeeded in establishing with certainty if Léonor Cipriano was really assaulted and by whom, it took the Madeleine McCann case and in addition, a "divorce" between the police and the magistrates, for five PJ inspectors to be accused of acts of torture...amongst them the head of the investigation into Maddie's disappearance.

Surpisingly, Gonçalo Amaral only became an arguido in this trial after having considered Maddie's parents as suspects in the disappearance of their daughter, which any police officer would have done, given the various elements of the investigation.

Even if all the specialists are in agreement in considering that the Joana Cipriano case has no relation to the disappearance and death of Madeleine McCann, the British media (and some Portuguese) have been encouraged to "revive" this story in order to implicate the head of the investigation for the PJ, Gonçalo Amaral.

Now, four years after the murder and the disappearance of Joana's body, Marcos Aragão Correia, the lawyer who has worked with Metodo 3's Spanish detectives hired by Kate and Gerry McCann, has also become Léonor Cipriano's lawyer and continues to want to link the two cases, seeing the work of Gonçalo Amaral in both.

"Regardless of everything about the Cipriano case - where he doesn't give a damn - if Marcos Aragão Correia succeeds in tarnishing Amaral's image, he would at the same time restore the McCanns' image," a PJ specialist in communication states, stressing that, "this was the objective plotted with the Spanish."

See also :

Marcos Aragão Correia : à une "vision" de l’affaire Cipriano
Jugement de Gonçalo Amaral le 24 octobre
Mère de Joana condamné une nouvelle fois
"Nous l’avons battu (Léonor), car personne n’aime les assassins d’enfants"
Médecin dénonce que les photos ne correspondent pas aux lésions
Affaire Cipriano : Extrait d'entrevue avec le psychologue et professeur universitaire Paulo Sargento

Cipriano case: Duarte Levy interviews Paulo Sargento, psychologist and university professor.

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27/11/08

Duarte Levy: What credibility do Léonor Cipriano's statements have, concerning the assaults which she claims to have been a victim of?

Paulo Sargento: Well, Léonor Cipriano's history, as well as that of her brother, is a complicated one, because, clearly what we know, even in terms of tests, tests which were carried out at different times on the brother and Léonor, is that their credibility is reduced. Reduced in the sense that both were diagnosed as having antisocial disorders with a significant degree of psychopathy.

Generally, this type of person has, in reality, a compulsion to lie, in circumstances where the lie serves their purpose, serves the individual.

That is to say, this is not an impulse to reduce anxiety, but to achieve an objective. And in these circumstances, credibility is always greatly reduced.

When we speak of a person, who has a significant degree of psychopathy, and confirming this idea....Actually her, I’m talking about her since this has been publicly confirmed in reports from the Institute of Social Reintegration in different circumstances and also, in a report from the Minors Protection Commission where this diagnosis is put forward. So, this type of person with this type of personality disorder, in reality they have little credibility in the sense that they lie to a great extent to achieve their goals.

At a mundane level, this signifies that from the point of view of responsibility for their moral judgments, these people don't see a way to achieve their ends. And when what's in mind is their....putting it in parenthesis "to save their skins" they can lie with conviction.

In these circumstance, their witness statements must be correctly evaluated by specialists, so that we are able to have the full range of veracity, not the truth, but the credibility of their statements.

Duarte Levy: Concerning Léonor and her brother, which of the two is the dominant person? If, in fact, this arises.

Paulo Sargento: We have no data....Of what we have from the point of view of the public, there isn't enough data to know, but there is one very strange factor, which is where the brother says in an insistent way that "if my sister talks, I will talk too." It's a public admission of a kind of subjugation. And in its entirety, the protagonism of the case relative to Léonor Cipriano also gives us a sense of matriarchy - that is to say of the main character in the entire course of events of the crime, or not.

But the first question to stress, and it's an easy one to highlight in each of the interviews given, is that when the circle closes in, when they are arrested, he says this once or twice: "If my sister speaks I will speak - I will only speak after she has spoken." - which makes her the main character and answering the question, she is probably slightly more of a leader that he is.

Exclusive interview by Duarte Levy. Images on the SOS Madeleine McCann web site associated with this article are by Joana Morais. Video available on the web site:

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27/11/08

Léonor Cipriano - doctor states that the photos do not correspond to the injuries.

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18/11/08

The Léonor Cipriano case: the sound does not match the picture.

According to the doctor at the Odemira Health Centre, where Léonor Cipriano had been examined a few hours after the alleged assaults by PJ inspectors, the details he recorded at the time of the examination do not match the bruises seen in the photos presented to the court in Faro.

The resumption of the trial of the five PJ inspectors, accused of acts of torture against Léonor Cipriano, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison for her daughter Joana's death, has thus been marked by a new witness statement that calls into question the authenticity of the photos.

"What I saw was a single, very heavy knock, to the right side," the doctor stated, stressing that it would be possible for the bruises to the left side of the face to have been done before his examination. According to the explanation given to the doctor by Léonor, the presenting injuries to her face at the time of the examination were caused by a deliberate fall down the stairs, after her interrogation.

This is not the first time that the authenticity of the photos, taken at the prison, has been called into question, because they show a Léonor Cipriano with bruises to both sides of her face, in particular to her eyes.

A digital analysis, carried out by legal experts at the request of the inspectors' defence, had already stressed the lack of reliability of the photos. Their low resolution, the absence of date or time, rendered complex analysis impossible.

Léonor was beaten in the prison itself and not by the PJ

A former cell-mate of Léonor Cipriano, in statements exclusive to this blog, had already confirmed that LéonorCipriano was indeed assaulted in the prison after her return from interrogations by the PJ.

"The bruises on Léonor Cipriano's face were not done by the inspectors (of the PJ) ..she was well pasted in the prison after she arrived. In prison nobody likes child killers," this former cell-mate of Joana's mother confirmed, about the assault within the prison, stressing that there were never so many bruises on Léonor's face or body, thus contradicting the authenticity of the photos.

A former chief prison guard had already come to the witness box to indicate unusual behaviour from the director of the prison, Ana Maria Calado, verging on a strange relationship with Léonor. The prison governor had then allegedly suggested that he change a written report about a few red marks on Léonor's face when she returned from her interrogation with the PJ. In the same report, also gave account of Joana's mother's explanation about her bruises: according to her the red marks were indeed the result of falling down the stairs after her interrogation.

Today, at the request of the defence lawyers for the five PJ inspectors, the presiding judge agreed not to hear the witness statement of the prison director, Ana Maria Calado. According to Me António Pragal Colaço, representing four of the five inspectors, the request is based on the existence if evidence that the director of Odemira prison, Ana Maria Calado, would not be a credible and impartial witness.

A letter from a cell-mate, addressed to the authorities after the accusations made about the inspectors, reinforces this version: according to this witness, Joana's mother had admitted to her cell-mates that she had fallen down the stairs, but that, after a meeting with the prison director, she had changed her version stating having been tortured and that she was counting on pocketing compensation.

A trial mainly targeting Gonçalo Amaral

Marcos Aragão Correia, Léonor Cipriano's lawyer, now claims that the Public Minister is authorising the opening of separate proceedings against the former inspector, Gonçalo Amaral. According to the lawyer, the former coordinator of the investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance, would be "the main perpetrator" of the alleged assaults on his client. In statements to journalists as he left the court room, the lawyer, known for his connection to the Madeleine McCann case, indicated that the indictment was incomplete as long as Amaral was not being tried as main perpetrator and punished for the alleged acts of torture.

Five PJ inspectors are before the court in Faro, accused by the Public Minister (MP) of various crimes: Gonçalo Amaral, former coordinator of the Portimão Department of Criminal Investigation, is accused of not having denounced the alleged assaults; Leonel Lopes, Pereira Cristóvão and Marques Bonne, are accused of having tortured Léonor Cipriano in order to obtain a confession, while inspector Nunes Cardoso is accused of falsification of documents.

Marcos Aragão Correia, who had already admitted taking up the Léonor Cipriano case at the request of the Spanish detectives working for Kate and Gerry McCann - which Metodo 3 however denied - continues to particularly target Gonçalo Amaral in a trial where no one exactly understands what the role of the former coordinator into Madeleine McCann's disappearance would be.

The alleged assaults took place in 2004, but it was only in February 2008 that the court decided that Gonçalo Amaral would also be tried alongside the other four inspectors, this in spite of the fact that LéonorCipriano had always asserted that the former head of the PJ was not present at the time of the events.

SOS Madeleine McCann

18/11/08