by Tony Bennett on Mon 19 Sep 2016 - 14:44
The Barcelona Connection: How the capital of Catalonia played a major part in events following the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
Perhaps one day we will know more about this interesting subject. Maybe someone who is a member of or visitor to this forum has information on the subject.
Meanwhile, here are the bare facts:
1 In an article about Cheshire businessman Brian Kennedy many years back, he was described as ‘spending half of the year in Spain' (most likely the winter season!)
2 Subsequently it emerged that he owns a villa in or on the outskirts of Barcelona [however, on this point, please see the post by Equity, in a subsequent post on this thread]
3 A long-standing member of CMOMM who has stated that he is a personal friend of Brian Kennedy, and who has made around 400 posts on the forum, also lives in Barcelona
4 We do not know exactly when, but either in September 2007 or even before that, Brian Kennedy has been appointed by the McCanns to head up their ‘private search for Madeleine’ and chose the controversial and now discredited Spanish detective agency, Metodo 3, to be his lead investigation agency. They were based in Barcelona. Some say there are grounds for believing that Brian Kennedy must have known Metodo 3 well before September 2007
5 Metodo 3’s main investigators, Francisco Marco, Antonio Gimenez Raso, Antonio Tamarit and Julian Peribanez were all based in Barcelona
Enlarge this image
6 On 13 November 2007 Marco and Gimenez Raso travelled from Barcelona to meet with Brain Kennedy at the PJ’s Portimao headquarters. They furnished the PJ with three ‘credible sightings’. All three of course turned out to be false trails
7 On 10 December 2007, Marco and Gimenez Raso again travelled from Barcelona, this time to meet, at the Arade Dam, Portugal, with Marcos Aragao Correia, the dodgy lawyer from Madeira who was subsequently employed by the McCann Team to prosecute Goncalo Amaral. There they plotted two strange searches of the Arade Dam, in January and March 2008, which were conducted by Correia. Detectives from Metodo 3 in Barcelona again travelled to the Arade Dam to collect the exhibits of bones and clothes dragged by divers from the lake
8 On 17 February 2008, McCann Team investigator Gimenez Raso was arrested and charged with supplying information to a gang which had stolen 25 kilos of cocaine from a boat in Barcelona harbor in 2004. At that time (2004) Gimenez Raso held a post of detective inspector for the regional drugs and trafficking squad, based in Barcelona
9 During the time Brian Kennedy employed him, Gary Hagland travelled to Barcelona to meet with Metodo 3 operatives
10 In August 2009, the McCann Team held a major press conference to highlight a possible sighting of Madeleine. The information was provided by an anonymous British banker or businessman who had been drinking all evening in the bars around Barcelona docks on Sunday 6 May 2007 (three days after Madeleine’s disappearance). He claimed that a Victoria Beckham-lookalike, aged around 20 with an Australian accent, had approached him on the dockside at 2am and asked him: ‘Have you got my new daughter’. He had apparently ‘agonised’ for two years before releasing this worthless piece of information. It was suggested by the McCann Team that Madeleine had been abducted on a yacht which had sailed from Praia da Luz to Barcelona. A few weeks later, Mark Hollingsworth wrote this in the Evening Standard:
“It was billed as a ‘significant development’ in the exhaustive search for Madeleine McCann. At a recent dramatic press conference in London, the lead private investigator David Edgar, a retired Cheshire detective inspector, brandished an E-FIT image of an Australian woman, described her as ‘a bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike’, and appealed for help in tracing her. The woman was seen ‘looking agitated’ outside a restaurant in Barcelona three days after Madeleine’s disappearance. ‘It is a strong lead’, said Edgar, wearing a pin-stripe suit in front of a bank of cameras and microphones. ‘Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by that point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant.’
“But within days reporters discovered that the private detectives had failed to make the most basic enquiries before announcing their potential breakthrough. Members of Edgar’s team who visited Barcelona had failed to speak to anyone working at the restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen that night, neglected to ask if the mystery woman had been filmed on CCTV cameras and knew nothing about the arrival of an Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished”.
11 In her book, ‘madeleine’, Dr Kate McCann wrote about the legal help the family had been receiving: “Adam Tudor and his colleague Isabel Hudson continue to do a vast amount of work for us, without payment…” Isabel Hudson was later to feature as the Carter-Ruck solicitor who conducted the legal proceedings from 2009 to 2013 against Tony Bennett. In 2008, she referred to how much she enjoyed regular weekends flying to Barcelona and walking in the Catalonian hills around Barcelona. In 2012 it was announced that she had married a Mr Xavier Martorell from Barcelona and she is now known as Isabel Martorell. It was in the Martorell No. 1 court, Barcelona, that McCann investigator Giminez Raso was tried over his alleged involvement with the 27-strong, exceptionally violent criminal gang that had stolen the cocaine from a boat in Barcelona harbour. He was found not guilty, but only after the judge lectured him that “You allowed yourself to get far too close to members of this gang”
12 Metodo 3 finally went out of business in 2014 after its boss Francisco Marco was found to have ordered his staff to illegally record private conversations between top Catalonian politicians at 'Le Petit Paris', a restaurant in Barcelona.
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There is one more possible ‘Barcelona Connection’ to add to the above list. And that is the alleged ‘sighting’ of Madeleine at a service station on the A9 motorway in southern France, near Montpellier, in February 2008. The sighting was by Miss Firing [sic!] who was described in the article as being ‘a student in Barcelona’.
The sighting came at a time when the corrupt detective agency, Metodo 3, used by the McCanns in their ‘search’ for Madeleine, had been publicly accused of creating sightings. One British citizen was expelled by the Moroccan government for doing just that: offering money to Moroccan locals at garages and pubs who would be prepared to fabricate a ‘sighting’ of Madeleine for money.
In one case, as we learnt at the Leveson enquiry, the Daily Express paid a woman - Naoula Mahli - £500 for her sighting. She claimed to have seen Madeleine in Fnideq, Morocco. Later, Lord Leveson was told at the Leveson enquiry into press standards that the Daily Express paid her £500 for her story. This alleged sighting by Naoual Malhi occurred (she says) on 21 August 2007, but was not reported to the Spanish police until 6 days afterwards. Mrs Malhi claimed she was told by police that over 100 people had reported seeing Madeleine McCann in the same mountain area. She reported her claims to Metodo 3, over two months later, at the end of October. Naoual Malhi was a Moroccan doctor who lived in a British expatriate community near Malaga, Spain. She was divorced and at the time had a 4-year-old child. The blonde girl identified in the city of Fnideq as Madeleine McCann turned out to be a Moroccan child living with her parents, according to the director of the Moroccan Judicial Police. Naoula Mahli wove a superficially believable story about having discovered where Madeleine was being held. But her story didn’t stand up. Did she make it all up just to get £500 from the Daily Express?
In this story below, we can see that Clarence Mitchell spoke to the Telegraph about the details. But was he also the reported ‘source close to the French enquiry’? - it does sound very similar to all those code words used by the press to refer to him: ‘a family pal’, ‘a source close to the McCanns’, ‘a source close to the investigation’ etc.
As for Melissa Firing, her ‘sighting’ was on the A9 motorway which leads from Montpellier in southern France, near the Spanish border, over the border into nearby Barcelona, over the border in Spain. She was described as being ‘a student in Barcelona’, the very place where Metodo 3 was based and where the head of the McCanns’ private investigation, Brian Kennedy, spends six months every year.
Is it possible that Miss Firing was paid by Metodo 3 for her claimed ‘sighting’?
Incidentally, Gordon Rayner’s article appeared in the very same week as one of the McCann Team’s leading Metodo 3 investigators, Antonio Gimenez Raso, was arrested and remanded in custody on serious charges of assisting a 27-strong, vicious gang, to steal millions pf pounds worth of cocaine from a boat in Barcelona harbour. He subsequently spent four years in jail.
Here is the article:
New Madeleine sighting ‘not her’
Daily Telegraph, 21 February 2008 – by Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1579366/New-Madeleine-McCann-sighting-not-her.html
The parents of Madeleine McCann were facing further heartache today when it emerged that CCTV footage of a little girl playing in the south of France is 'almost certainly not her.'
Hopes of finding the missing four-year-old were raised when a Dutch student said she spotted the child at a service station close to the city of Montpellier last Friday.
Melissa Firing, 18, said the child was with a 'tall, swarthy' man who bundled her away in a car. But French detectives have already spent hours poring over the footage at the Criminal Research Institute in Rosny-sur-Bois, just north of Paris - and their initial verdict is that it is not Madeleine.
A source close to the French enquiry said: “The police have looked at the film and observed the man and the little girl who could have indeed resembled the little Maddie, but their judgment is that it almost certainly not her”. The police are so sure of their verdict that they have passed it on to the public prosecutor in Montpellier, recommending that the search for the girl is scaled down.
The source added: “To be absolutely certain they' re going to go through the CCTV footage again on Thursday, but there appears no hope at all that it is indeed Maddie”. Police have even tracked down the owner of the car in which the little girl was driven away after the number plate appeared on the video footage.
“He has provided a plausible explanation of what he was doing with a young child in a motorway service station”, said the source.
“Once he has been spoken to more fully it is likely he will certainly clear the matter up once and for all”.
Miss Firing claimed she had not been able to scribble the registration number down, or even punch it into her mobile phone.
French police were already investigating allegations that young children, including babies, were being ‘sold’ at impromptu auctions in car parks along the Mediterranean coast.
“It appears that the latest sighting has nothing to do with this trade”, said the source.
Since Madeleine went missing from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz last May there have been numerous sightings of her across Europe and in North Africa, all of which have proved false.
In almost all cases those claiming to have spotted Madeleine have failed to recall the most basic information, including car registration numbers.
Speaking before the news from police institute was announced, Maddie's parents Gerry and Kate McCann were said to have been ‘wary’ of the latest sighting.
Their spokesman Clarence Mitchell said the McCanns, who remain official suspects, had been informed of the latest sighting on Tuesday, but were wary of becoming ‘emotionally committed’ until they had seen the footage for themselves.
Miss Firing, who lives in the Dutch town of Nijmegen but is a student in Barcelona, told the Hart van Nederland newspaper: “When I saw the little girl, I recognised her immediately. At first I could not believe it. She was about six feet away from me.
“She had the same deformation in her eye. She looked just the same, though she was skinnier about the face and her hair was shorter.
Miss Firing added: “I tried to take a picture of her on my phone, but I did not get it. I called the police but they kept me waiting on hold for half an hour. Finally they arrived and took the CCTV film from the restaurant.
“They took me back to the police station and showed it to me and I could see myself on film behind Madeleine with my mouth open in shock”.
The manager of the L'Arche restaurant on the A9 near Montpellier confirmed he had given his CCTV footage to police.
The man, who asked not to be named, said: “We have the CCTV on all the time, and there is more than one camera, so there is a lot to look at. None of us noticed this little girl ourselves”.