Gerry McCann "Freudian Slip" on June 4th 2007

Two other BIG GUYS that were not exactly my friends:

General Rocha Vieira and Esmael Loonat 

snippets of my career of journalist (I)

In Portuguese, we have two words to mean a different kind of feeling related with fear: “receio” and "medo". The firts word is a bit more strong that “preoccupation”, in English, but does not mean that a person if afraid of something (have “medo”). I may have something more than preoccupation (“receio”) about the future of my job, if I know that the newspaper where I work is in a bad financial situation. But I will be afraid (have "medo"), if I know that there is already a list of 10/15 journalist that will be fired in a short period of time.  I couldn’t find the precise word to reproduce that “nuance”, in English, about the difference between “receio” and “preoccupation”. “Receive” is more than “preoccupation”, but it´s not “fear”. Talking about fear, I always have in my mind a popular say, common in the small and poor country village where my father was born and I heard him mention several times: “Those who die of fear, are buried in s**t”.

I am afraid of only three things: a slow and painful death, due to a sickness like cancer; a long, mentally incapacitating illness like Parkinson or Alzheimer; and taxes, another of the very few certainties in life, as Mark Twain allegedly said (Benjamin Franklin was the first to refer those two things as unavoidable). Many years ago, I decided – and it’s a decision I will never change – that in the two first situations I mention, I will chose the moment when I will go. I will not wait for the “Grim Reaper” to take me and it does not matter that euthanasia is not authorized in Portugal. About taxes, well, the only way to escape paying it, is death…

Through my career as a journalist, I had a few occasions when I was threatened, two of them quite serious. I was not exactly preoccupied with those threats, but a little bit more than that, I had some “receio”, as I explained in the beginning of this post. The first time I was threatened in a serious way – and my family was also included –  was in Macau, when Rocha Vieira was Governor (he finished his mandate, in 1999, embroiled in a scandal of a money transfer, while still Governor, to a private foundation in Lisbon to be presided by himself). General Rocha Vieira, a Portuguese Army Officer, was a man who had a extreme difficulty of getting along with some basic principles that are common, in Europe, since the 18^th Century: Freedom of Opinion, Expression and, above all, Press Freedom. When he left Macau, in 1999, after nine years of intimidation and threats against critical Portuguese newspapers, there was a a sigh of relief from all Portuguese journalists that also welcomed warmly the first Governor appointed by Beijing, Mr. Edmund Ho, a statesman, a real gentleman and a good and sincere friend of the local Portuguese journalists and community.

Cartoon published by "Ou Mun", the biggest Chinese newspaper  of Macau, about the scandal Governor Rocha Vieira was embroiled

Both men had a completely opposite attitude about news and Press Freedom. General Rocha Vieira just hated all of those that dare to criticize his Government and didn’t made any effort to disguise it. Mr. Edmund Ho was a so polite man that he never showed any attitude of disregard of hostility against any journalist or newspaper, didn’t matter how critical the newspaper was to his Government. It’s a irony that the now retired Lieutenant-General Rocha Vieira is a employee of a Chinese Sate owned company, “Three Gorges”, that bought EDP, the former state-owned electricity supplier in Portugal and appointed him as their official representative in the Administration Board of the company – a very rare show of trust in a a “Lilongwe” (“foreign devil”, a common and depreciative expression in Chinese to refer Western foreigners) from the the Chinese Government. As far as I know, it’s the first time from 1807 until now, that a top Portuguese Army Officer works for a foreign Government. During the “Napoleonic Wars”, several high ranking Portuguese Army officers were part of the invading army the French emperor sent, in that year, to occupy the country.

Since 1995, when I became editor of a small Portuguese daily newspaper in Macau, I quickly realized that a civilized relationship, at least, between the General’s Government and the newspaper “Gazeta Macaense”, was impossible. The “motto” of his Government about the Media, as one of this Press advisers told in a interview, was clear: “More than journalists, we need ‘militants’ of the national goals”. This reminded of that phrase of Samuel Johnson, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. When there is no legal, moral or ethical reason to justify the actions of a Government, there is the habit – not acceptable in Democratic countries – to mention the “Superior interest of the Nation”, a very common phrase of the 48 years of Salazar’s dictatorship that Portugal endured.

So, I became some kind of “Public Enemy nº 1” of the General and, within less than two years, he made a deal with the owner of the newspaper, Mr. José Manuel Rodrigues, a Macanese lawyer, actually chairman of the “Association of Macanese Communities”. He closed the newspaper, fired all journalists (the two of us that worked there) in a way that was a example of one of the most cowardly attitude (and lowest baseness of character) I ever met in my life: he gave orders to change the locks of the newspaper’s office so, when I went there, on a Sunday afternoon, to prepare next day edition, my key didn’t worked. I phoned him to tell that there was a problem with the lock and I had to call somebody to fix it. He told me he decided to close the newspaper, for “restructuring it” and we were all fired. Two months after this, he was one of the five members of the Legislative Assembly (the local mitigated version of a Parliament) appointed by the Governor.

José Manuel Rodrigues, former owner of "Gazeta Macaense"  and chairman of the "Association of Macanese Communities"

From 1993 to 1997, my family in Macau (my wife, my brother and my sister-in-law, even my first ex-wife…) were harassed and indirectly threatened, in an attempt to make me change the editorial line of the newspaper, first, and after to try to get me out of Macau. Because, even working as a freelance journalist, I was a source of problems for the General. Judge Farinha Ribeiras was a public admirer (he said that, on a interview to TDM, Macau TV) of Mussolini, Franco and Salazar, who supported controversial extraditions of suspects from Macau to China, where they could be sentenced to death and, since 1993, was the Judge-President of Macau Supreme Court (“chosed” and appointed by the General). In 1994, he filled 38 complains in Court against me, as Editor of the newspaper, for defamation. I was not alone, as he took “Amnesty International” to court, complaining also of being defamed by the organization, in 1994.

Mr. Ribeiras said, on that interview, among many other foolish and brainless things, that “Italians still missed the times of Mussolini, because trains use to run on schedule”. We made a comment, on the newspaper and reminded him that it was not Mussolini’s “virtue” but a demand from the Nazis, that wanted the trains destined to Treblinka, Auschwitz and other death camps to arrive on time. Mr. Farinha Ribeiras made a formal request to the Court to arrest me until I went on trial, to avoid that I run away from Macau. It was a bad idea, as both the “Committee to Protect the Journalists” and “Amnesty International” decided to act, on my defense, with this second organization warning authorities of Macau that if was was arrested, in that context, they would include me in their list of  “Prisoners of Conscience”.

I sent a letter to the “Committee to Protect the Journalists” telling them what was the situation in Macau and they decided to use the letter as a preface of the 1995 edition of "Index on Censhorship"  - a great honor, no doubt.
 As a freelance journalist, I got some internal documents, in 1995, from TDM, the local Government owned TV station, with instructions to the journalists to ignore the demonstrations of pro-Democracy groups on the June 4th anniversary of the Tienanmen events. I published those internal documents and reactions, even in Portuguese Press, in Lisbon, were strong. In 1997, I was a little bit tired of being almost jobless for the two previous years, as my stories as a freelance journalist found less and less space, to be published, in Macau. The 24 square miles of Macau were, indeed, a very small area for me and the General to share. So, I decided to go back to Portugal, where I got a job, two months after arriving.

The second time I was threatened (and also has some "receio", but not "medo") was between 2003 and 2004, when I published several stories, after many months of investigation, about the activities of a fundamentalist Muslim group, the Tablighi Jamaat – a group nobody heard about, in Portugal, until then, and no newspaper had ever made any mention of their existence in our country – but was banned in Russia, in 2009, for example. I managed to explain to the readers of the weekly “O Independente” (the second biggest one, in Portugal, at the time) not only that they were here, but also the dimension, the vast network they had, all over the country, the fact that they controlled the majority of Muslim associations and communities, including the most important one, the “Islamic Community of Lisbon” (“Comunidade Islâmica de Lisboa”).

They did it always behind the curtain, behaving in a way that you can say was more secret than discreet. No one never saw any of their leaders in the front row of any public ceremony or situation where non-Muslims or journalists were present. Troubles (for me) really start when I published a photo of their “operational” leader, Mr. Esmael Loonat, a man that, at the time, was already in the “radar” of the Counter-Terrorism Unit of Polícia Judiciária.

I endured months of threats, even against my family in Macau, in phone calls that, for example, mentioned details like the name of my seven years old son, living in Macau with his mother, the exact place where his school was and who used to take him to and from school. My reply to those phone calls was always very short and I can’t reproduce it here.

Mr. Esmael Loonat, the "operational" leader of the  Taillight Jamat in Portugal, in 2004

A few months after, the Taillight Jamaat made a turnover in their “public relations” policy and decided to introduce themselves to the Portuguese people, trough several interviews with newspapers an TV stations, as a very humble, peaceful and simple Muslim organization, that just followed a little bit more strict interpretation of Quran, in their daily lives. Even the “operational leader” gave interviews to Media and allowed them to do something completely forbidden, a sin for the Tabligy Jamaat: taking photos of himself. Just to give you an idea, no Taillight Jamaat family has a TV set at home, as it is considered a “source of conspurcation of Muslim ideals and principles” – a quote from “Al-Madinah”, a monthly magazine of the group, in Portuguese. With this change of policy, all threats against me (that including two bomb threats against the newspaper) just vanished.

The fascist Judge, admirer of Mussolini, who filled 38 complaints against me (snippets of my 37 years as a journalist - I)

In 1995, I was Editor of the Portuguese daily newspaper of Macau, “Gazeta Macaense”. Mr. Farinha Ribeiras, first Judge-President of the recently set-up Macau Supreme Court, filled 38 complaints in court, against me, for defamation. The reasons were the same number of editorials, opinion columns and a “Open Letter to Mr. Farinha Ribeiras”. That judge, one week after arriving in Macau, gave a interview to local government-owned TV station, TDM.

In the interview, he said that he was a strong admirer of António Salazar, the dictator that ruled our country for 48 years with a iron-fist and a secret police (PIDE), responsible, among many other things, for the execution, in a small Spanish town near the border with Portugal, of General Humberto Delgado, a man nicknamed “The Fearless General” (“O General Sem Medo”) the exiled leader of the political groups that opposed the dictatorship. Ha said that he also admired Francisco Franco, the Spanish counter-part of Salazar, who ruled Spain for even more time.

Final touch: Mr. Farinha Ribeiras said that “Italians, even nowadays, miss Mussolini's time, because trains used to rule on schedule. In my “Open Letter”, a very polite, respectful (but ironical) text, I explained to Mr. Farinha Ribeiras that Italian trains run on schedule not by virtue of the good work of Mussolini's Government, but because their German allies just didn't accepted any delay in trains destined to Treblinka, Dachau, Birkebau or Auschwitz. Germans are a very will organized people, and the commanders of the Nazi death camps didn't like to fail to fulfill their planned daily quota of Jews and other “untermenschen” ('sub-humans', in German..) that had to be sent to the gas chambers, killed and incinerated.

Two months after Mr. Ribeiras filled those 39 complaints, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I ha lunch at home and drove my 126 cc Suzuki to the a old building where “Gazeta Macaense” has its office. It was around 4:00 pm, the usual time I started to work, to prepare next day's edition (we didn't published the newspaper on Sunday, Saturday was our day off. Than, I couldn't open the door. Something wrong with the lock, I thought. I phoned the owner of the newspaper, Macanese lawyer José Manuel Rodrigues, and told him I had to call somebody to fix the lock of the door.

“No need to do that”, he replied. “I decided to close the newspaper for a 'restructuration, so you are fired. Come to my office tomorrow to settle your accounts. So, within two months, I found myself jobless, with a lawyer friend of mine, also from Angola, Pedro Redinha, defending me “pro bono”, married two years ago, with a one year-son (my son Rodrigo, the 2nd reviewer of “The McCann's War”.

A small but important detail: I was Editor of “GM” only since June 1995. From the middle of 1993 until June 1995, I was Head of News & and Information Department of Macau Government Press. Started to work there few weeks after there was a change of Governor, in Macau.

Carlos Melancia, the previous, quit after being formally charge on a court in Lisbon of corruption. Mária Soares was the Portuguese President, at the time - a great statesman, but also a cunning politician Macau had a unique situation, in the organization and balance of powers of the Portuguese Republic: it depended only from the President.

Mário Soares, who was his second term as President – and both were running smoothly, ha was a fantastic politician and mass communicator – hated Macau and everything related with that territory. “That's the only f***** shadow on my Presidency”, he used to tell to his closest friends. Because the so-called “Scandal of the Fax toMelancia” was a story newspapers had been tuning for months.

So, Soares decided to choose a Army General – the kind of soldier that only shot a G-3 machine gun during instruction, as he was from the Engineers Corp, so spend the war in the comfort of offices with air-conditioned, in Luanda, the capital of Angola. Portugal faced a colonial war, since the early 60's, in three fronts: Guiné-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique (14 years of war that ended with the April 25 Revolution in 1974, around 5.000 dead soldiers, more than 25.000 seriously injured and handicapped for the rest of that life.)

Mr. Soares gave clear instructions to General Rocha Vieira: “You have “carta branca” - meaning do whatever you need to do, but get me Macau out of the front page of the newspapers, because every time it happens, my name is there also, as I am the only person in charge.

Rocha Vieira took with him the a journalist I met years ago and would find, later, to be biggest scoundrel and scumbag I ever met in my life: Afonso Camões, who is now Editor of the second biggest daily newspaper of Macau (he was chosen for that post by the than Portuguese Prime-Minster, José Sócrates (they are friends since primary school, and remember Sócrates spend long time in jail and now is waiting for trial, because of the biggest corruption scandal of the History of Portugal.

I knew Camões, from the corridors or the Portuguese Parliament. I 1993, I was the nº 1 political reporter of Rádio Renascença, a radio was on the top place in terms of audience, in Portugal. Afonso Camões was a trainee, starting his carrer.

When ha arrived in Macau he asked to go back to Macau Government Press Office (I worked there from 1986 until 1992, first as Head of Information & News Department, than as Deputy-Director.

By the, is was that that allowed to meet and shake hands with the legend and eternal icon of USA TV journalism, Mr. Walter Conckrite, the “Voice of America”. He went to Macau, half-retired, while preparing a special report for ABC, I think, about the “Small Dragons” of Asia – Taiwan, South-Korea, Hong Kong and Macau.

Accepting the invitation of Afonso Camões to the his second-in command was the biggest mistake of my file! And is happened because I was on holidays, with my family, in Thailand when the General and a few dozen dedicated, fanatic, blindly loyal henchmen (something I only realized one year after accepting the job offer.

If I have been in Macau, during that week, obviously that I would read the first interview Afonso Camões gave to “Tribuna de Macau”. He had a killing phrase, for me, but I only found that interview 4 months after: “ More than journalists, we need militants of the national goals”, he said.

That phrase reminded me of a famous quote from Samuel Johnson, an eighteenth-century English writer and thinker: "The Nation is the last refuge of the scoundrels." It was not a phrase that attacked who was truly patriotic, who defended his country sincerely. It was an expression applied in a political context, published in a pamphlet that attacked the false patriots. Its meaning is clear: when the holders of the power, the rulers, act outside and/or against the principles and rules of a Democratic country and don't have arguments to justify their actions, they just mention the superior interests of the Nation, as was done with regularity in the salazarist regime. 

 

(to be continued...)

Gerry McCann "Freudian Slip" on June 4th 2007

THE COVER OF MY eBOOK "THE MCCANN'S WAR" WAS CONSIDERED BY FACEBOOK AGAINST ITS COMMUNITY STANDARDS !!!!!!!!

 (Since May 6th my book is on sale at Amazon...)

eBook "The McCann's War" - Gerry planning for the future...

Already on sale at Amazon (7,42 USD)

Already avalibale for pre-order, at Amazon, on sale from May 6th

Photo: © Paulo Reis

Preface: Gonçalo Amaral

Translation and 1st Review: Peter McCleod

2nd Reviewer: Rodrigo Reis

Graphic Designer: Tiago Reis

----------------

Selected Posts

More on the deleted call records

The “Niggle” and Strange Tale of Robert Murat

The Maltese Sighting

---------------

"The McCann's War", already on Amazon's website!

To pre-order “The McCann's War”

"The McCann's War" uploaded to Amazon...

.

...you can already pré-order it. Usualy, a eBook is availabe to be purchased ione day after being uploaded.

A Guerra Dos McCann - Versão Inglesa

“The McCann's War” available at Amazon on May 2nd

The eBook will be available for purchase on May 2nd, at the site of Amazon.

Publication of the eBook “The McCann's War” on Amazon

I already uploaded almost all the material for the eBook - cover page and book sheet mentioning the author's name, and credits to my three collaborators:

Peter McCleod, former superintendent at Nottinghamshire Police

[Translation & Review of the English text];

Tiago Reis, Graphic Designer who produced the cover page;

Rodrigo Reis, 2nd Reviewer;

Only one step is missing: uploading the PDF file with the text paginated and photos inserted. I am doing it, now. A few hours ago, I asked Amazon's Customer Support Service how long will it take, after I upload the PDF file with the text and photos, until the moment “The McCann's War” is available for purchase [12 euros...] but I am still waiting for their reply. As soon as I have it, I will post the information here.

Cover of the eBook "The McCann's War" - On sale at BUBOK from April 29th

Bubok Web Page

The “McCann Pinocchio” couple

- Gerry McCann: “From the minute we discovered Madeleine missing, and the police were called very early on, we alerted them, you know, almost immediately (“CNN: Mystery of Madeleine McCann Disappearance Still Unsolved”); 

- Lieutenant-Colonel Costa Cabral, Head of Public Relations of GNR (email: cg.rep5@gnr.pt): “The first call to Police Precinct of GNR (Portuguese Rural Police) in Lagos, reporting a missing child and asking for Police help was made around 10:50 pm. All phone calls to GNR precincts are automatically recorded by GNR Central Communications System” - (“Madeleine McCann Disappearnce” blog; 

- Kate McCann: "When she was first stolen, paedophiles were all we could think about it, and it made us sick, ate away at us" (Book “Madeleine”, by Kate McCann)

- Alex Woolfall: “During the first 48 hours the word being used was 'missing' rather than 'abducted' or any link with a pedophile or any sort of crime. Towards the end of the second week I detected a shift towards there being a consciousness that she had probably been taken rather than wandered off, just on the assumption that anybody would have found her by now." (Interview with “The Times”, October 6, 2007)

Some advice to Penny Wark, correspondent of The Times in Portugal (Published on 4.9.07)

 I feel I have the experience, as a journalist (26 years), the age (50 years old) and the knowledge about Madeleine's case to give some advice to the journalist that wrote a story on "The Times", published today. This is the tittle and the link for the story: 

 

From The Times

September 4, 2007

Madeleine: one fact, many lies, endless grief

It’s now 124 days since Madeleine McCann disappeared. Our correspondent charts a story that became global, lurid and often invented – and hears how the McCanns learnt to think positively after imagining the darkest scenarios and suffering uncontrollable grief

And this is my advice (quotations from "The Times" story are in bold, my advice is in regular characters):
(...)
As everyone is acutely aware, the reason we know so little about Madeleine’s disappearance is because she was abducted in Portugal, where the segredo de justiça law prevents the police from putting information about a criminal investigation in the public domain. Had Madeleine disappeared in Britain or the US, this would not have happened.

Right. But you know that these damned secrecy laws also exist in many other European countries, namely those countries on the other side of the British Channel, like Sweden, Netherlands, France, Spain, Greece. I would say the “segredo de justiça law”, as you wrote, exists in some 24 of the 25 countries of the European Union. Now, maybe you can help me with something that has puzzled me, since the begging of this case: in UK, there is no secrecy law, right? Journalists are informed any time British Police has a new suspect in a crime investigation, right? Witnesses and victims of a crime can tell the journalists all details about what happened, right? So, how does British Police manages to keep crime investigations going on without, for example, the suspects running away, as soon as their names are printed at all newspapers? One more question about this subject: why wasn’t this policy of openness applied in The Soham murders case? I watched it, every day, at Sky News (every 15 minutes...) and at BBC and never heard specific details about the ongoing investigation...

We don’t know exactly when Madeline was reported missing, and I am told that none of the published time lines relating to May 3 are accurate.

And when Gerry and Kate McCann say that they discovered Madeleine was missing around 10:00 pm, May 3, this is also not accurate?

I have also learned that the Portuguese response system is slow and unwieldy (...) Of course the McCanns’ bid for information from the public, unsupported by details of the abduction, had already been hamstrung by the investigation’s slow start.

Really? Some British holidaymakers and Mr. John Hill, manager of Ocean Resort gave a different perspective (and they were there, at that night...). Just a few phrases, taken from several British newspapers:

• “ (...)The manager of the resort, John Hill said around 60 staff and guests at the complex had searched until 4.30am while local police notified border police, Spanish police and airports.” – The Telegraph, May 5, 2007
• “ (...) Portuguese police yesterday sealed off the three-storey block and forensic specialists fingerprinted the ground floor window of the McCanns' apartment. All airports, ports and border posts have been alerted. But despite a massive search throughout the night by police, sniffer dogs and dozens of holidaymakers, there has been no sign of Madeleine (...) – This is London, May 4, 2007;
  - “ (... )The McCanns scoured the lanes above the resort, shouting for her in the dark. Police notified border police, Spanish police and airports and deployed sniffer dogs (...) there were conflicting reports yesterday of how effective the Portuguese police operation has been.” - The Independent, May 5, 2007;
  - “ (...) A family friend, Jill Renwick, told GMTV that police activity ground to a halt at 3am. But Mr Hill said this was not true, and that police had been searching with dogs overnight and continued to search today. He said: ‘The police have their dogs in and have been conducting sweeps of the beach and rocky areas very close to the village. There is a criminal investigator here in charge of the situation and about 20 officers." – The Independent, May 5, 2007;
  - "There are a criminal investigator and around 20 officers here but unfortunately there's still no information. If I was in the McCanns' situation, I'd be frustrated as hell. If there were 100 police here I'd want more (...)” - The Mirror, May 5, 2007;
  - “ (...) Officers sealed off the five-storey holiday block with crime scene tape and fingerprinted the shutters and window sill outside Maddy's room. A patio to the rear of the block, believed to be attached to the family's two-bedroom apartment, was also sealed off. – The Mirror, May 5, 2007;
  - “ (...) By late afternoon the hunt for Maddy had intensified with helicopter crews, firemen and maritime search teams involved. A special criminal investigation team from the Policia Judiciria was travelling down from Lisbon. Sky News weather presenter Jo Wheeler said local police had been giving out maps and telling people where to look. She said: ‘It's very well organised." - The Mirror, May 5, 2007;
  The McCanns’ call to the police was received in Portimão, a 30-minute drive away, and the practice is for a local officer to attend the scene to assess whether a crime has been committed and whether to call for help.
  I had a different information. As the first Police officers to arrive at the crime scene were from Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR) I called Lieutenant-Colonel Costa Cabral, head of Public Relations at Guarda Nacional Republicana headquarters, in Lisbon (phone number, email address are here). He told me that first call to GNR precinct at Lagos was received at 10.50 pm, May 3, and only after Police oficcers went there and evaluated the situation, CID in POrtimão was called.
  Police officers drove to apartment 5A at the Ocean Club where the McCanns were staying, then referred the case to the Policia Judiciaria in Portimão.
  
  Right. Two GNR officers went to Ocean Club (a 10/15 minutes drive, from Lagos), evaluated the situation and than they called CID in Portimão, 25 km from Praia da Luz. They assembled a team and they were at the crime scene between 11h40, 11h50 pm, May 3.
  
  Thus vital time was lost immediately after Madeleine’s disappearance – when it was imperative that the investigation should become active.
  Indeed. I think that vital time was lost between the moment Kate McCann realized her daughter was missing, around 10h00 pm, and the moment the first call was received at Police precinct, in Lagos: 50 minutes, time enough for a car to drive from Praia da Luz, following the highway A22, close to the Spanish border (a border that doesn’t exist, because since the Shengen Agreement was signed, countries that are members have no border control posts and can not put a road block in a border without asking, before, permission to do that, to the Shengen authority). Who is responsible for that, I'm not sure, yet.
  
  Add to that the parents’ status as doctors, people who save lives, yet who leave their children, Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings, without adult supervision in an apartment while they eat at a tapas bar a 52-second walk away, and the chattering classes are simultaneously full of sympathy and hooked.
  52 seconds away? Interesting way of looking at this subject. But I think you have to walk fast, no? I did part of that walk (on the road behind the buildings where apartment 5A is located) and I was almost sure it took me as long as that. Anyway, as I am close to Praia da Luz, I’ll go there again, today, at lunch time, and I’ll do that walk once more.
  
  “It’s a quiet, safe resort,” says Gerry when we meet in a borrowed flat. “The distance from the apartment to the restaurant was 50 yards. We dined in the open-air bit and you can actually see the veranda of the apartment. It’s difficult because if you are [at home] cutting grass in the back with the mower, and that takes me about half an hour, and the children are upstairs in a bedroom, you’d never bat an eyelid. That’s similar to how we felt. We’ve been unfortunately proved wrong, out of the blue. It’s shattered everything.”
  "50 yards"? "We dined in the open-air bit and you can actually see the veranda of the apartment"? Well, take a look at these pictures. 50 yards is less than 50 meters, right?
  
  This is the first time that the McCanns have confirmed that the apartment was broken into. This information does not compromise Madeleine’s safety, and rules out one of the numerous red herring theories that the police have explored, that Madeleine wandered away on her own. There is no logic in withholding it from the public.
  People in charge at Mark Warner, the British company that runs Ocean Club, seems to have a different opinion, and I quote:
  - “(...) Mark Warner, the holiday firm which runs the luxury resort, claimed last night there was no sign of a break in at the ground floor apartment overlooking the sea.” – Guardian Online, May 5, 2007;
  - “(...) the apartment the (McCann) family were staying in was surrounded by other apartments, all of which have "quite sophisticated" locks on the doors.” – Mr. John Hill, manager of Ocean Club, Guardian Online, May 4, 2007;
  - “(...) Mark Warner management denied there were signs of forced entry at the flat claiming instead that roller shutters had been slid up and the bedroom window opened.”
  – The Mirror, May 5, 2007;
  - “ (...) Although forensic officers fingerprinted the window sill of the ground floor apartment and sealed off its private patio, a spokesman for Mark Warner said there had been no evidence of a forced entry. However, the shutters had been slid up and the bedroom window opened after the McCanns had left.” – The Independent, May 5, 2007;
  
  Then things started to go wrong. By the end of the second week of August, when the McCanns marked the 100th day since Madeleine’s disappearance by launching a YouTube initiative to help to find missing children, the Portuguese media had suggested that the McCanns could have killed their daughter, and the British press was not shy about repeating and even revelling in the “monstrous slurs”. Coincidentally that was the week I first visited Praia da Luz (...)”
  What a pity I didn’t know you were there! I could have called you and invited you for a coffee. It’s curious, from August 9 to August 26, I also worked for the The Times, covering Madeleine’s case from Praia da Luz (where I am, at this moment, so if you are still around, after interviewing the McCann, what about a coffee at Batista?) and I even did a front-page story, with the help of my colleague Duarte Levy, and two other good stories (If I may I say that...): this one and this one.
  They (the McCann) tend not to pick up the more sickly nuances within the press, because they don’t read it; instead the campaign team (which consists of the full-time lobbyist the McCanns hired after the fund was set up, plus two other part-timers who ensure seven-day-a-week cover to field the innumerable media inquiries) shows them what they need to see, including translations of Portuguese coverage.
  
  What a fantastic team! A full-time lobbyist and two part-timers doing all that! Seven-day-a-week cover to field the innumerable media inquiries and also translating news published in Portuguese Press! Hard-working people, indeed... 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Brendan de Beer, the editor of the English language Portugal News, is the only journalist to have spoken at length to Chief Inspector Olegário Sousa, the spokesman for the PolÍcia Judiciária on the Madeleine investigation. Sousa, who has 20 years’ service and has previously focused on crimes relating to works of art, armed robberies and car-jacking, suggested that some information is being inadvertently leaked by officers at informal lunches with friends. De Beer is more specific and suggests that some of the more incongruous claims are no more than gossip.
  No, it isn’t. Many other Portuguese journalists have spoken at length, many times, to Chief Inspector Olegário de Sousa. I did it, also, several times. But, unfortunately (for us, journalists....) he does a good job. Talks a lot, but says nothing worth to be published.
  
  Some of the police detectives involved in the case have spoken off the record, he says, and journalists have contacts within the police just as they do in Britain. “I’ve spoken to a couple of them [police officers], but never to an extent where they told me a syringe had been found in the room or there was blood on the keys of the hire car. That kind of information seems to come from police constables. You get someone who tells something to their wife, they tell their hairdresser, who tells a journalist.
  
  Mr. Brendan de Beer, tank's God you are not the kind of journalist that hears something from her or his hairdresser, who heard it from the wife of a constable, and publishes a story, based on that gossip, calling it a “source close to the investigation”. Of course, you are not. That’s something only Portuguese journalist do, right? Or did I get you wrong? Could you explain better what you mean by that?
  
  Brendan de Beer: "I’d be very surprised if there was any bribery, though a constable does earn only about €600 or €700 a month, so it could happen."
  Mr. Brendan de Beer, that’s not a nice thing to say. That’s almost so serious as publishing a report saying that Police believe the McCann were responsible for the death of Madeleine Beth McCann. You would be surprised to hear that some constable was bribed but you know it could happen, as they only earn between €600 or €700 a month? So, that’s a possibility, right? Portuguese CID Chief-Inspectors earn a little bit more. Do you think that it may happen with a Portuguese CID Chief-Inspector? No? Only Portuguese constables are, let’s say, on the verge of being bribed in exchange for information, because of the low salaries they receive?
  Not that British reporting has been irreproachable. The slurs have been widely dissected, a suspect has been invented by one needy tabloid, and when I (Penny Wark) rang Paolo Marcilemo, the editor of the Correio da Manhã, which has a reputation for scurrilous reporting, he said that he was no longer giving interviews because the British press has misquoted him.
  You called Paolo Marcilemo, Editor of Correio da Manhã? Strange. There is a journalist called João Marcelino, who was editor of Correio da Manhã – but he left on February, to Diário de Notícias, where he has been the Editor, until today. Paulo Marcelino, as far as I know, is a journalist from Correio da Manhã (and this is a story he published on 27 August, about the “Sex Expo”, in Portimão). So, either you talked with the Editor of Diário de Notícias, João Marcelino, or you talked with the Editor of Correio da Manhã, Octávio Ribeiro. Or you talked with Paulo Marcelino, who is not the Editor of Correio da Manhã, but just a journalist? Some confusion, around here, no? Yes, I understand...
  Those strange, almost weird Portuguese names, the funny sound of the words that seem more like a Slavic of Middle Eastern language, those vowels so difficult to pronounce, with strange orthographic signals, like the letter “ç” in “caçar patos” (means “hunting ducks”...)
  
  Portugal, like Spain and many other European countries, does not have a sex offenders’ register, and as for the UK, although a Child Rescue alert system was launched here last year, relying primarily on speedy contact with the media, it has yet to be tested. Neither does Britain have any reliable statistics on missing children, and this means that the scale of the problem is unknown.
  Indeed. We don’t have a so serious problem with paedophiles and sex offenders, as you have, in the UK. This is one thing I agree with you. Other thing I agree completely, is the tittle you choosed for your story: "Madeleine: one fact, many lies, endless grief". As we say in Portuguese, “Bingo!”. In French, it will be “Touché!”. In Chinese, people uses ”全中!”
  
  
  Paulo Reis
  
  
  PS: Is Penny Wark any relation to Kirsty Wark (who interviewed Gerry at Edinburgh)? This is not my question, just a question that was posted at the comments box of Times Online, by Mr. LB, from Birmingham...

My eBooks “A Guerra dos McCann” and "The McCann's War" are at risk of being “Carter-Rucked” soon...

I got several messages, this morning, coming from a couple of journalists, my long-time friends, and from some of my sources in the Portuguese legal and judicial area. They told me that a request for an injunction to suspend the sales of my eBook “A Guerra dos McCann” is being analyzed by a well-known and prestigious Portuguese lawyer's office.

The injunction intention is to ask for a immediate suspension of the sales of the eBook "A Guerra dos McCann", by Bubok, while the court analyzes its content, to decided if it's defamatory or not – mainly due to the preface of GonçaloAmaral, as those same sources told me.

According to them, it seems that the McCann couple is thinking about the possibility of requesting a court decision, forbidding definitively the sale of ”A Guerra dos McCann”.

The expression “being Carter-Rucked" was created by the well-knownUS criminal "profiler" Pat Brow, whose book "Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann", was removed from the site of Amazon, five weeks after being published. Amazon got a letter from Carter-Ruck and send a message to Pat Brown: 

"We have received a notice of defamation from Carter-Ruck Solicitors that says the content of Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann (UPDATED) B0055WYVCQ, contains defamatory statements regarding their clients, Gerry and Kat McCann. Because we have no method of determining whether the content supplied to us is defamatory, we have removed the title from sale and will not reinstate it unless we receive confirmation from both parties that this matter has been resolved. 

Best regards,

Robert F.

http://www.amazon.com"

If the selling of my eBook is suspended, by a court decision, I will upload a PDF file of both editions (“A Guerra dos McCann” and “The McCann' War”) at several of those sites that host files for free and allow everyone to download a copy, also for free.

I will insert a request, at the top of the first page of each PDF file of the two eBooks, asking to all of those that download it for free, to make a contribution to reward my three years of hard work, researching and writing the book "A Guerra dos McCann" and than translating it to English, using either my PayPal account or, through my IBAN, directly to my bank account. 

In this "worst case scenario possibility", even a contribution of 2/3 euros will be welcome and appreciated (The Portuguese eBook is on sale for 8 Euros, the English edition will cost 10 Euros).

I will not be silenced, neither “Carter-Rucked”...

Take note of these best five free file hosting websites. It things go wrong, in 5 minutes I will upload my eBooks to these sites.

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