Madeleine McCann's disappearance: The "circus" has come to town...

Saturday, 8 September 2007

The apparently innocent curiosity of several British citizens, residents in Algarve, that have been detected, during the last months, at Praia da Luz and Portimão, is being closely monitored by Portuguese authorities. On two specific occasions, people with similar profiles were seen, at places and near situations that were later referred by all British Press and had a great impact in public opinion, helping to reinforce the negative image of the Portuguese Police and its investigation in the Madeleine case.

This close monitoring of movements around the main points where the investigation is going on has started few weeks after Madeleine's disappearance. It seems that the activity, in the field and until now, is restricted to the gathering of all information available. A lot of that information has resurfaced with all the indications of having been packed and feed, either to the British or Portuguese Press, on specific dates and situations, in order to achieve a result that is clearly part of a wider strategy.

Most of these activities have been conducted by retired British citizens, some of the long time residents in Portugal. Other group was “recruited” among the already large locally born British community. These collaborators have an important skill, which is the capacity of speaking the local language, but their lack of experience means a higher risk and they have been used just in low-level operations.

A police case

Portuguese authorities want to keep the situation where they consider it should be: a police case, that they don't want to be taken to a different level. However, the amount of resources – both financial and human - that were put in place has worried Portuguese authorities, who have some difficulty in understanding the reason why a police case is being targeted with so much intensity.

The fact that several reports, prepared by the first team of British Police that have been acting as liaison officers, were classified and the access to those reports quickly restricted to a small group of high ranking British Police officers, was one of the first tips that raised the attention of Portuguese authorities.

Since last weekend, strategy changed and most field operations were called off. The main target, at this moment, is the credibility of the Portuguese forensic services that collected the samples analysed in Birmingham. As the results came from one of the most prestigious British laboratories, the only possibility to reduce its impact is to question the conditions and techniques used to collect them.

Next steps

Yesterday, that strategy was visible – may be too much visible, to achieve good results – in the British TV, with two former policemen telling viewers in UK, among other things, that Portuguese forensic experts either don't use special clothes, when working on a crime scene, or just use the same clothes in different crimes scenes, contaminating the samples. Also, doubts were raised about the use of proper equipment, like refrigerators, to keep the samples in good conditions until they were sent to Forensic Science Services.

One of those experts even admitted as possible that Portuguese police may have “put” the evidence to incriminate innocent people, in order to avoid the embarrassment of a unsuccessful investigation. This argument was also used by several other sources, quoted by many British newspapers.

The idea of an attempt to frame innocent people is being prepared since several weeks. The first step was taken when selected information about Joana Cipriano's case was made available to all British Media. For the next days, the instructions are to concentrate all resources in raising the doubts about how the samples were collected. Expecting that details of the statements of the “arguidos” will be public, soon, in the Portuguese Press, the operational plan includes a second (already in action) and third phases: a forcing on the idea that innocent people is being framed and a clear comparison with Joana Cipriano's case.

The lethal weapon, to be used when conditions are proper, is a “secret”: a large, well organized and professionally manipulated amount of information about the Casa Pia case. Organizers believe this data will be very efficient in the difficult task of convincing British public opinion that incompetence, corruption and complicity, also on high levels of the Portuguese society, are the explanation for what happened to Gerry and Kate McCann.

Paulo Reis & Duarte Levy
Gazeta Digital/SOS Madeleine
http://gazetadigitalmadeleinecase.blogspot.com/2007/09/circus-has-come-to-town.html