Ever increasingly, the pair of them.
She's terrifyingly thin, he's boiling with rage: So why HAVE the McCanns put themselves on trial?
During the first few weeks after Madeleine McCann's disappearance, Goncalo Amaral came to symbolise all that was wrong with the abysmally mishandled Portuguese police investigation into the case.A portly provincial CID chief** who was plainly out of his depth and had a penchant for long, wine-fuelled lunches and leaking favourable stories about himself to the Press, he was removed as head of the investigation after six months.
And when he was later revealed to have perjured himself to cover up a brutal interrogation by members of his team, detractors scoffed that his name ought to have been spelt with an 'o', as in 'amoral'.
In an extraordinary transformation of fortunes, however, he is now a Portuguese national icon, 'courageously' fighting for the right to express his bombshell theory: that Madeleine was not abducted, but died accidentally, and her parents, Gerry and Kate, covered up her death.
More of this turgid shameless catalogue of lies at The McMail.
I shall have a look for the accompanying article for the above, I put it together when everybody was getting giddy over a Daily Mail story that wasn't quite as biased as their usual propaganda. But that's a job for tomorrow.
Then we have Madam's blog entry.
We are currently in Lisbon for the trial to determine whether the injunction against Mr Amaral's book and DVD should remain in place. This trial is about whether the book is a true reflection of the official judicial process in to Madeleine's disappearance and whether its contents damage the ongoing search for Madeleine, her siblings and our reputations.
Mr Amaral's book and DVD contains some information from the PJ files but there is a lot in the files which is not in Mr Amaral's book. Hence it is highly selective and therefore biased. Mr Amaral's book contains his opinions rather than fact. His opinions differ from the findings in the PJ file. The conclusions of the latter are: 1.there is no evidence that Madeleine is dead and 2. there is no evidence that Gerry or I are involved in Madeleine's disappearance. This is very different to the theories and conclusions of Mr Amaral. It is logical and common sense that spreading these theories as Mr Amaral did (and continues todo) damages the search to find our little girl. If the general public (and the Portuguese people in particular) are bombarded day in and day out with such theories, this will eventually 'colour' their understanding and judgement -lies and inaccuracies become fact. If people subsequently believe that Madeleineis dead and that we are involved in her disappearance then they will not look for Madeleine, will not consider any suspicions about others which they may have and will not come forward with information. We consider this highly detrimental to the search for Madeleine.
More of this turgid shameless catalogue of lies at Joana Morais
Not a sweaty corpulent figure in an ill-fitting jacket then?
