LIBEL TRIAL DISCUSSION HERE

Great posts bobbin and sami.


OTH you say ''So the system of outing witnesses in Portugal is the root cause of the problem. '





What problem are you referring to please?

Over The Hill wrote:I'm sorry you think all my hypotheses are invalid

Here's another one:

Police are investigating a crime

In your desire to help the case, you have suspicions about a friend regarding things that they have said or done, and you decide to share this information with the police

Your suspicions turn out to be wrong and your friend is innocent

The police publish your comments online so everyone can read them

Your friend is no longer a friend and now hates you

Better not to have gone to the police in the first place, huh?

You persistently miss my point. If you consider that you know something which should be made known to the police, relating to a crime, then to withhold that information (i.e. cover up for a friend or relative) is deemed to be perverting the course of justice.

worriedmum wrote:Great posts bobbin and sami.
OTH you say ''So the system of outing witnesses in Portugal is the root cause of the problem. '
What problem are you referring to please?

The problem that someone may decide not to go to the police with their suspicions for fear of the fact that, if they are wrong, it may have terrible repercussions when that statement is made public and they are outed as a witness, as happened in this case when it was shelved

bobbin wrote:You persistently miss my point. If you consider that you know something which should be made known to the police, relating to a crime, then to withhold that information (i.e. cover up for a friend or relative) is deemed to be perverting the course of justice.

No I'm not missing your point bobbin, just saying that you live in a perfect world and I live in the real one. There's always plenty of perverting the course of justice going on

Over The Hill wrote:

worriedmum wrote:Great posts bobbin and sami.
OTH you say ''So the system of outing witnesses in Portugal is the root cause of the problem. '
What problem are you referring to please?

The problem that someone may decide not to go to the police with their suspicions for fear of the fact that, if they are wrong, it may have terrible repercussions when that statement is made public and they are outed as a witness, as happened in this case when it was shelved

But who are you saying is suffering terrible repercussions in this case OTH.

I didn't - I said that the witness statements were made public, as in this case

But suppose you made a statement like the Gaspar one and you realised by now that it was just a big misunderstanding (guys can be very silly when they've had a few drinks), how would you feel that your original statement has been sent around the world for everyone to read? Not even a retraction would repair the damage between you and your (former) friends

Over The Hill wrote:

bobbin wrote:You persistently miss my point. If you consider that you know something which should be made known to the police, relating to a crime, then to withhold that information (i.e. cover up for a friend or relative) is deemed to be perverting the course of justice.

No I'm not missing your point bobbin, just saying that you live in a perfect world and I live in the real one. There's always plenty of perverting the course of justice going on

You clearly think your position to be the only correct one. As for living in the real world, yes, I do actually live in it, but just because there is 'plenty of perverting the course of justice' does not make such perversion suddenly become 'correct or acceptable'.
Furthermore, the Gaspars (friends of the McCs) live in the real world and did make their courageous 'statements' to the police of their observations and the concerns that their observations caused them to feel.
They clearly measured their duty to friends, against the distaste for perverting the course of justice by omission of speaking out.
Fortunately, this really happened in this real world and it serves to balance out the creeping permissiveness that you seem to think 'rules the day' in this real world.
The whole point of this site and its serious posters, in this real world, is to counteract the tendency towards perversion of the truth.

Over The Hill wrote:But (and I admit this is pure hypothesis), it's possible that some people did refrain from sharing their suspicions with the PJ because they knew that their statements wouldn't be kept private and would be published online at some later date

This could even apply to people making comments to the PJ about friends and acquaintances

If that was the case, the procedure of making witness statements public would have harmed the investigation rather more than Amaral is alleged to have done!

That's why this process of outing witnesses isn't perfect - yes, it has helped to keep the investigation alive because of the interest that it caused on forums like JH, but if it restricted the information that everyone is working with, it hasn't made things any easier

Apologies if I've missed anything as I have skim-read to catch up.

My general view is that this case has suffered, probably more than any other in history, through wilful blindness, bigotry, xenophobia and more, and allowed to fall between the stalls of two national investigations.

The McCanns' systematic campaign of disinformation, lies and litigious gagging made the case hugely susceptible to leakage of information from the start. It came in the form of Portugal  redressing the balance and defending the reputation of its judicial system by publishing online the  investigation up until the point it was truncated.

Pivotal to the Gaspar statements farrago was the fact that they were not forwarded to the PJ until September 2007 - a five month delay on the part of the UK police. This was a dereliction of duty, plain and simple. It constituted a huge insult to the Portuguese police and an inexplicable obstruction to the delivery of justice to a child and, most significantly, to any other child coming to harm during that delay.

 During this period Amaral was removed. This catapulted the significance of the Gaspar statements (and the attempt to play down their importance) into a new arena. A political one. Portugal v UK, put crudely.

 In other words I think the intransigence of the British police, government and MSM combining in blind support of the McCanns based - infuriatingly for the Portuguese police - on a tissue of lies fabricated by the Tapas 9, forced the issue. In short, it became a question of honour.

The PJ tried patiently and tortuously to engage the Leicester Police's help in arranging a reconstitution. The chummy e-mails passing between the LP and the tapas group at that time speak volumes. There was no rigour, no professional distance, but a sense that the police were entertaining every excuse under the sun from them and  conveying the minutiae back to the PJ with the formality they should have reserved for the unreliable witnesses. Then followed the unbelievable Rogatories where the 9 were allowed to read each others' statements and adjust their recollections accordingly.

Insofar as the question of Would the Gaspars ever have made a statement if they knew it would be made public? - I would say this. I think under normal circumstances, those things would never have been published by the Portuguese online. But they were left hamstrung part way through an investigation that was shelved for no discernible policing reason. I truly believe the shenanigans of the tapas 9 and the abdication of professional behaviour from the UK police, backed up by the biggest political interference we have seen, conspired to humiliate the PJ and push them into a corner.

The only weapon the Portuguese have been left with is the Sword of Truth.

Let's not forget the old adage, Doctors stick together like s*$!". What the Gaspars volunteered to reveal was a huge departure from the norm. They knew full well the gravity of what they'd testified. It took real guts to do it. They would also have weighed up the cost to themselves when, or if, they took the witness stand in the knowledge that if the case proceeded to court, their evidence would become public anyway. They decided that a child's life was more important.

And ultimately, that is what the PJ did too, when they threw open the lid of a Pandora's box the UK establishment had much preferred remained closed.

 The reasons for lockdown on this case we will likewise discover one of these days through an online leak. That will be the day when, finally, the message of the Savile years is fully absorbed by our own backward system and translated into a new era of openness, honesty and rigour in the prosecution of crimes against defenceless children.

Over The Hill wrote:I didn't - I said that the witness statements were made public, as in this case

But suppose you made a statement like the Gaspar one and you realised by now that it was just a big misunderstanding (guys can be very silly when they've had a few drinks), how would you feel that your original statement has been sent around the world for everyone to read? Not even a retraction would repair the damage between you and your (former) friends

Eh?  Couldn't believe what I read re. red highlighting.

What the Gaspar's alleged is, imo, rather more than guys being silly after a few drinks.   To me it is shocking behaviour and I believe cannot (if it happened), be put down to being silly after a few drinks.

Sheesh!

The Gaspars came forward after hearing that Maddie had disappeared, that to me tells me how very concerned (Mrs. Gaspar) was about the behaviour allegedly witnessed on the holiday with them.

Over The Hill wrote:I didn't - I said that the witness statements were made public, as in this case

But suppose you made a statement like the Gaspar one and you realised by now that it was just a big misunderstanding (guys can be very silly when they've had a few drinks), how would you feel that your original statement has been sent around the world for everyone to read? Not even a retraction would repair the damage between you and your (former) friends

If this is a hypothetical example I think you have used the wrong one.  Guys are very silly, women too, after a few drinks.  There are limits to acceptable silliness and for me they do not extend to the behaviour discussed in the Gaspar statements.  There is a saying here, what goes in sober comes out drunk, in other words the truth often comes easily after a few drinks.

If you are using it as an actual example then for Mrs Gaspar to make such a statement, she would have to be relatively sure of what she felt and put a lot of thought into going forward.  In that case she will never be able to forget what she thinks she witnessed. I might be wrong, but I thought she said she had avoided holidays with them after that, so the friendship had changed in her mind anyway, before the statement.

 If she was lying for vexatious reasons there is no friendship to repair anyway.

Again though, whilst I understand the point in general you are making, you are talking about changing a whole judicial system, so it's not restricted to this particular case.  Neither might it have been relevant if the couple had not continued in such a controversial manner and/or allowed the investigation to continue.

Over The Hill wrote:I didn't - I said that the witness statements were made public, as in this case

But suppose you made a statement like the Gaspar one and you realised by now that it was just a big misunderstanding (guys can be very silly when they've had a few drinks), how would you feel that your original statement has been sent around the world for everyone to read? Not even a retraction would repair the damage between you and your (former) friends

The Gaspars fortunately held the concern of a little girl above that of their friendships.
They as doctors have a duty to report any concerns they have about the safty of a child.
Also I am sure they took very seriously the GMC advice regarding making false accusations about other members of the health care professions.

I am not in favour of using alcohol as an excuse for any kind of behaviour.

Amaral also says in his book :

"This witness statement for the couple SG and KG is taken by the English police on May 16th thirteen days after Madeleine's disapperance. That inforamtion, very important for the progress of the investigation, was never sent to the Portugese police. When the Portugese investigators learn about similar events that allegedly took place during a holiday in Greece - without, however, obtaining reliable witness statements - they tell the English police, who, even at this piont, refrain from revealing what they know on the subject".




So there is suggestions of similar events in Greece. 


I think Mrs Gaspar sleeps well at night, and does not lament the loss of any "friendship".  She's likely thanking her lucky stars for the Portugese system, as from the above one has to wonder if the UK system might have accidentally misfiled all statements in relation to this distasteful subject.

But suppose you made a statement like the Gaspar one and you realised by now that it was just a big misunderstanding (guys can be very silly when they've had a few drinks)

How extraordinary! Someone else  made almost this exact statement on this very forum a while back. It leapt out at me then as it does again here!

I never heard this excuse posited by any other person in all the thousands of posts I've read on this case. I thought it was a one off until today.

Now let me go away and rack my brains. I know it will come to me who that was.

I apologise to the mods if this is going a bit off-topic, and to Candyfloss whose thread this is, but since the libel case is partly about establishing the truth and whether or not Amaral was right to repeat things that were open to debate, it does have some relevance

I have never seen anything in what the Gaspars allegedly saw that led them to believe the conclusions that they drew

It is very easy to misinterpret something, put two and two together and make 20, we've all done it

Nobody knows for sure who GM and DP were allegedly referring to

If I offered my thoughts to the police in the belief that it might be helpful (if my worst suspicions were true) I wouldn't expect that info to be circulated to the world

If I knew it might be, I probably wouldn't disclose it unless I knew it was absolutely crucial. Re the Gaspar statement, we aren't talking about something that is necessarily central to the case anyway

It's different if someone actually saw Maddie being carried away/anything else that explains her disappearance. Then it would have been anyone's duty to come forward, and I certainly would have done

Any leads could turn out to be crucial and Mrs. Gaspar was sufficiently concerned to think that what she says she witnessed could be very useful information to the police.

Correct, plebgate, my concern is that those thoughts were later made public and the fact that others may not have come forward with other thoughts because they are aware of that procedure

Over The Hill wrote:Correct, plebgate, my concern is that those thoughts were later made public and the fact that others may not have come forward with other thoughts because they are aware of that procedure

Or conversely it might prompt others to come forward.

Well if anybody knows anything along the same lines, then they have a duty imo to notify SY.   If they do this then their statements are not going to be put on line here and will not be put on line in Portugal unless the case is shelved again.

plebgate wrote:Any leads could turn out to be crucial and Mrs. Gaspar was sufficiently concerned to think that what she says she witnessed could be very useful information to the police.

Exactly, it's not for 'witnesses' to decide whether their information is useful to the investigation or not.
They need to deliver their statements and let the investigators weigh them up.
The police ask any witnesses to come forward for a very good reason.
They want as full a picture as possible and this will only come from people giving honest statements about their observations and concerns.
I do not see how this need for information should be thwarted by any concerns for one's own personal agenda.

It would not surprise me  if  GA had consulted the Gaspars. He himself has said around 20% of the files are held back. He could have held their statements back too if the doctors had objected.

He was considerate enough to spare the McCanns the embarrassment of an open court. He was anxious to protect Madeleine's memory. He showed empathy for her parents during those early days despite his suspicions. It's  in the nature of the man to be considerate.

Maybe the Gaspars are even braver than we thought and gave the ok.

Frankly, I am surprised that no-one within Leicestershire police Service  appears to have been disciplined over the failure to send these statements promptly to Portugal.Someone senior must have made that decision.

It is as scandalous as the inaction over the Savile allegations that were swirling around at that time. Nothing done.Swept under the carpet.It was not for Leicester police to decide what was important or not in the McCann investigation.It was their job to pass it on to those who were investigating.

It will only be when the relevant officers involved have been disciplined/sacked, will public confidence begin to return.At the moment all we see is cover up and indifference to the incompetence.

candyfloss wrote:

Over The Hill wrote:Correct, plebgate, my concern is that those thoughts were later made public and the fact that others may not have come forward with other thoughts because they are aware of that procedure

Or conversely it might prompt others to come forward.

Great point candyfloss.

OTH you are giving me the impression of someone galloping round in circles at a fairground ,shooting off fusillades willy-nilly in the hope of hitting something, anything really*.  The main thing that comes across to me is that IMO you are  really annoyed about the Gaspar statements...

* so far you have won a goldfish

I have no idea what this has to do with the libel trial. It's way off topic for me.

Perhaps Admin can post up the details of the McCanns v Amaral.

This is what the libel trial is about and it was brought about by the McCanns (the plaintiffs).

Let's get back on topic.

worriedmum wrote:OTH you are giving me the impression of someone galloping round in circles at a fairground ,shooting off fusillades willy-nilly in the hope of hitting something, anything really*.  The main thing that comes across to me is that IMO you are  really annoyed about the Gaspar statements...
* so far you have won a goldfish

Well worriedmum, you are wrong all counts, which doesn't give you much hope of solving what happened to Maddie. And at least I don't post spiteful comments about other contributors