"End Search for Madeleine McCann"

Is there any way to find out (via FOIA) whether or not they re-interviewed the Tapas 9 during the time they were spending £11 million? 

Someone must be accountable somewhere.

Hi Bluebag,
DCI Andy Redwood and I presume SCI Hamish Campbell declared that the Tapas group of friends were not Suspects, so if you're not a suspect for what reason would they need to interview you?

We have seen no hint of any questioning of the TAPAS 7 . However, why should we hear about it  - it is likely that it would not be publicised in any way.

We have no information on this - although the only thing I would note is that the TAPAS 7 have been more 'public' on their facebook pages since Jan 2015 than ever before
over these last 7 years. i.e we can see comments they have made re holidays etc. But that says nothing - other than they appear to be leading relatively normal lives. Who knows?

This was posted on Joana's excellent forum back in 2014  (before she was hounded to the point of no longer posting). Could this be more poignant today than it was back in June 2014, when it was posted on Joana's forum:

http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2014/06/on-brooks-murdoch-and-camerons.html




«Power games

Their willingness to ruin lives was directly linked to their political power. MPs feared that they might find their own private behaviour being monstered on News International’s front pages. This is the power of the playground bully: he has only to beat up one or two children for all of them to start trying to placate him. Beyond that, government collectively feared having its agenda destroyed, its daily activity destabilised, its future terminated if Murdoch’s editors turned against it. Former ministers and senior Whitehall officials all tell the same tale – that as Murdoch increased the size of his empire, governments became obsessed with newspaper coverage, particularly that of the Sun.

The power which Coulson and Brooks enjoyed delivered the kind of access for which unscrupulous lobbyists will pay large bundles of cash. A tabloid editors she was courted by ministers. At the Leveson inquiry, Brooks disclosed 185 meetings with prime ministers, ministers and party leaders while apologising that her records were incomplete. At the News of the World, Coulson showed little enthusiasm for politics, according to former Downing Street officials, one of whom remembers him being invited for breakfast with Gordon Brown and showing so little interest in policy that the two men ended up talking about newspaper circulations. Brooks, however, was a different story.

Far more than Coulson, she played the game of power, exploiting her extraordinary social skills to build an unrivalled network of connections.

Backed by fear of what her journalists could do, Brooks used her access to get her way. She could do it over small things: “If she was going to the US and she realised she had no visa, all she had to do was to make a phone call to a minister, and they’d sort it out for her,” according to one former official. She used it to get stories. An adviser from the Ministry of Defence recalls the government being under pressure about British soldiers being killed and maimed by roadside bombs in Afghanistan: “We were told we couldn’t release all we were doing for opsec reasons, yet the MoD went ahead and gave the information to the Sun.”

More than that, she used her influence to try to change government policy, not simply and legitimately by publishing stories but privately with ministers by cajoling, insisting, playing on their fear. This might be aimed at scoring a victory for her newspapers – persuading the government to order a police review of the Madeleine McCann case as part of her strategy to encourage the toddler’s parents to let her newspapers serialise their book; pushing hard to end the career of Sharon Shoesmith, head of children’s services in Haringey, whom the Sun blamed for the death of Baby P. Shoesmith was sacked, a decision which was later described by the court of appeal as “intrinsically unlawful.” Or Brooks aimed at larger policy which suited the ideology of the Sun and of its owner – over crime, immigration, public spending and notoriously over Britain’s membership of the European Union and its potential involvement in the euro. (...)»

in The Guardian, 'Phone-hacking trial was officially about crime; but in reality, it was about power' by Nick Davies 25th June, 2014

Another old article worth a revisit.

Monday 18 July 2011 19.30 BST 

The Met and Murdoch: A cosy relationship that began in Wapping John O'Connor

No one wanted to acknowledge what was happening between News International and the police until it was too late



 

The resignations of Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates are the result of close associations between the police and News International that go right back to the start of printing at Wapping.
An assistant commissioner was in charge of police operations to ensure that the News International product got out on to the streets. There is no doubt that Rupert Murdoch and his senior executives were extremely grateful for the assistance given by the police, and many police officers have enjoyed an unhealthy, close relationship with News International since those days.
In some ways this works for the benefit of the police in that they got the inside track on many stories which led to successful prosecutions. However the price to be paid seems to be turning a blind eye to some of the excesses that were employed by the News of the World in particular.
The department for professional standards at Scotland Yard mounted many operations against agents of News International and corrupt police but each case was dealt with as a stand-alone case. And nobody put together the pattern on endemic corruption that was emerging.
Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, a former commissioner, in his book Not for the Fainthearted, openly admits his friendship with many of the News International editors. Everybody thought that this was a safe association; it has taken the phone hacking scandal to blow the lid off it.
We are now in a position where two of the most senior officers in the country have resigned and Stephenson in particular is claiming that he has done nothing wrong, despite having accepted £12,000 of hospitality from Champneys. He should ask himself whether he would have been offered that hospitality had he been a police constable. If he received this hospitality because he was the commissioner, then he must have known it was wrong.

The recent revelations that Yates enjoyed a personal relationship with Neil Wallis has similarly made his position untenable. Up until then I think he gave a good account of himself at the home affairs select committee and the hectoring by the chairman Keith Vaz was not called for. The fact that Vaz said Yates's evidence was "unconvincing" is really a euphemism for telling untruths. And there was no reason for him to have said that.
My own view is that these officers are not intrinsically dishonest but have behaved with breathtaking naivety.
Yates made a grave error of judgment in failing to properly reinvestigate the phone hacking case. I suspect that he was misled by other officers who were involved in the original investigation. All Yates needed to have done was to have employed a couple of junior officers to go through the 11,000 pages of paperwork and produce an analysis and a briefing paper on what they found.
The fact he failed to do that wouldn't seem to me to be sufficient grounds for him to resign.
I was at the Yard at the time of the last big corruption scandal involving pornography and there was a dismay that pervaded the Yard and I think that dismay now pervades the whole of the police force.
Police officers now really don't know where they stand. They want to be supportive of the commissioner but they are in a position now where they see that the commissioner has gone, the assistant commissioner has gone, they have no clear leader and they are in limbo until someone can get hold of this organisation and put it back on track.
I think there is going to be a need to understand as far as gratuities are concerned what's acceptable and what isn't. It isn't acceptable to take a gratuity and then just record it in the hospitality book. That's no longer good enough for officers of any rank. And if senior officers have been labouring under the misapprehension that rank has its privileges, well it doesn't. They must abide by the same rules and the same protocol as every other officer up and down the country.





http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/18/news-international-police-distorted

Hi Sallypelt,
So glad you had the guardian link,it just go's to show if you have the funds you can work wonders and no doubt especially if you have the Prime Minister of the County's brother represent you in Court, eh rebekah,LOL?
So Evidence given to select committees,means the evidence given to the committee cannot be then used as evidence of wrongfulness in any future prosecution?
As Rebekah had told the inquiry that she was personally aware of the practice of offering"Money to Police Officers" for storys(bribes)?
Her barristers made mince meat out of the states representatives in open court,making inference of evidence without proof by the state and openly admitting the incompetence of the then Editor of the News of the World of what she should have known and not known, yet she received 16 million pounds from News International for closing down her news paper that was found guilty of breaking the Law?
Yet four years down the line she is re hired by her former Boss in charge of News Corporation in the UK and they say Crime doe'snt pay?
Now we have the mirror rehashing ages of persons eight years younger than they actually are and they are supposed to be accurate about the stories content, you could not make it up,could you?

Here, PJ police are famous for playing their cards close to their chests. Last week national director Pedro do Carmo said the Portuguese investigation was analysed regularly.

“If it comes to a point where there is nothing more that we think we can do, if there is no perpetrator of the crime to be found, then the next step would be to archive”, he agreed
---------------------------------------

'the next step would be to archive'

LOVELY!

All those 'second' tranche of OG/PJ investigation 'files' (2011-2015) released for public 'consumption'.

You 'worried' about 'that' ex DCI, SIO@OG for 3 YEARS 6 months, Mr A Redwood?

'Call me Andy'