2nd MF letter to David Cameron re PUBLIC ENQUIRY INTO ALL ASPECTS OF MADELEINE'S DISAPPEARANCE

by **sharonl** 21.03.19 20:07

The Madeleine Foundation

Asking the questions about what really happened to Madeleine McCann

66 Chippingfield Tel: 01279 635789
HARLOW
Essex,
CM17 0DJ
Tel: 01279 635789
e-mail: ajsbennett@btinternet.com
website: www.madeleinefoundation.org.uk

Friday 22 July 2011

Mr David Cameron
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
LONDON
SW1A 2AA

Dear Prime Minister

re: The need for a full public enquiry into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann (Further letter)

Once again we thank you for receiving, in October last year, our petition, which is still running, calling for a judge-led, independent. public enquiry into all aspects of the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann on 3 May 2007. We also thank you for the answers given by your colleague to our accompanying Freedom of Information Act questions; however, we do not think that your staff have supplied sufficient particulars in response to our questions, therefore we seek a review of his answers, and further information, in a separate letter, enclosed with this one. In this respect, we know that you have frequently said on the record that ‘transparency’ is your watchword, so we hope that full answers will now be given within both the letter and the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act.

However, you have not provided us with any response to our letter, in particular to the four key requests we made in our previous letter (copy attached) to you of 18 May 2011, which were:

1) That you set up a full, judge-led, independent public enquiry, with the power to summon witnesses, into all aspects of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann

2) That you call off the ‘Scotland Yard Review’

3) That, in the alternative, if you and the Home Secretary, Theresa May, still consider that there should be a ‘Review’, that you find another Chief Constable who would agree to carry it out, not the Met Police, and

4) That you and the Home Secretary make it crystal clear to both the reviewing team and to the public that this ‘Review’, if it is to proceed, will be able to pursue the hypothesis that MadeleineMcCann died in her parents’ holiday apartment and that the McCanns conspired to hide her body.

Changes in the situation since we last wrote to you

There have been many developments in the situation relating to our requests since we wrote to you in May. Among the main ones, in summary, are the following:

A. Some key officers amongst the top echelons of the Metropolitan Police Force have been forced to resign in relation to their conduct, which clearly embraces both serious failures to investigate crimes, and the existence of a cosy nexus with the top echelons of News International. It is likely that an enquiry will find that their closeness to News International clouded their judgment. Just as we said in our earlier letter, that raises the question as to whether Scotland Yard is the correct police force to carry out a Review into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, assuming that it is right to continue with this Review at all.

B. Sir Paul Stephenson, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has been forced to resign. It was he, together with yourself, the Home Secretary and senior staff from News International who co-ordinated the ‘exclusive’ announcement by yourself of a Review, apparently on terms demanded by the McCanns, in the Sun newspaper on 12 May 2011, the date Dr Kate McCann published her book, ‘madeleine’. Sir Paul Stephenson has been heavily criticised for having committed his force and £3.5 million of taxpayers’ money to this Review exercise, the purpose of which you said was to ‘support the family’.

C. Your own very close relationship with News Corp or ex-News Corp and News International owners and senior executives has been highlighted during the past three weeks. This included your family’s close personal relationships with Rebekah Brooks, and your 26 meetings with her and other senior NewsCorp figures in the first 15 months of your Premiership. It included discussions with Rupert Murdoch himself. However, the single most embarrassing feature of all these relationships for yourself, as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition has made clear and the media agree, was your decision to appoint Andy Coulson, against clear advice from many senior figures, as your Director of Communications - and then invite him for a weekend at Chequers two months after he had resigned from your service, the second time he had resigned because of his association with the News of the World ’phone hacking scandal.

In the House of Commons on Wednesday this week, offering words of regret and sorrow about your appointment of Andy Coulson, millions of us heard you utter these words: “You live and you learn and believe you me, I have learnt”. We believe that some of the painful lessons you have learnt over the past three weeks also apply to matters concerning the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Can I now therefore reproduce what I wrote about the man you appointed on 4 March as your No. 2 to Andy Coulson, to help you in your General Election Campaign.

QUOTE

Returning to Clarence Mitchell, it is clear that he has a close relationship with Murdoch and his newspapers. It is clearly relevant that, in October 2008, when he began working for the McCanns on a part-time instead of a full-time basis, he was immediately employed by Murdoch’s son-in-law, Matthew Freud, at Freud Communications. His ability to work both as Head of the 40-strong Labour government’s Media Monitoring Unit, and then be employed by yourself, suggests he is a person of major influence in top government circles. There remain major question marks as to why former Prime Minister Tony Blair considered it essential to despatch the Head of the government’s Media Monitoring Unit (Mitchell) to Portugal [to help in the Madeleine McCann case] and of course about Gordon Brown’s interventions in the case.

Another indication of Mitchell’s close relationship with Murdoch is the number of times he has co-operated with both the Sun and the News of the World in promoting ‘exclusive’ stories about the McCanns in those newspapers. These stories have often been lacking in any serious evidential basis and were just media sensationalism.

UNQUOTE

Your own ties with Matthew Freud are clear from the fact that it was on his private jet that you were conveyed to meet with Rupert Murdoch on his yacht in the Mediterranean in the summer of 2009, after which the Sun, which boasted of getting Labour elected in 1997, changed from its 12-year support for Labour to support for the Conservatives. The social columns of newspapers have reported seeing both Clarence Mitchell and yourself, for example, at parties at Matthew Freud’s Holland Park home in London and at various News International parties.

In like manner to the warnings you were given about Andy Coulson, we should like to draw your attention to some of Clarence Mitchell’s recent actions, connected with the Madeleine McCann case.

For example, Carlos Anjos, Head of the Portuguese Police’s professional association, who had dealings with Clarence Mitchell over a lengthy period regarding the Madeleine McCann case, said of him: “He lies with as many teeth as he has in his mouth”.

In 2007, Clarence Mitchell was part of the McCann Team which appointed the highly controversial Spanish detective agency, Metodo 3, as their private investigators. Its boss, Francisco Marco, appointed his lead investigator, Antonio Jimenez, to be what he was to call ‘The Head of my Madeleine McCann Investigation’. Jimenez, until late 2004, had been the Head of the Catalonian Anti-Kidnapping and Anti-Trafficking Unit for the Spanish Police.

As we have recently demonstrated in a 144-page article about the McCanns’ friend Brian Kennedy on our website, Antonio Jimenez, in his capacity as Head of the Madeleine McCann investigation:

· interviewed potential witnesses in Portugal and Morocco, amidst credible reports that he induced witnesses to come up with false ‘sightings’ of Madeleine by bribing them

· aided the McCann Team to develop press stories smearing Robert Murat as Madeleine’s possible abductor, a matter about which his mother made public complaint

· met with the Portuguese Police and Brian Kennedy at a meeting at Portimao Police Station on 13 November 2007 connected with Madeleine’s disappearance, where he was accompanied by his boss Francisco Marco, and

· met with Portuguese lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia at the Arade Dam on 10 December, where the two of them plotted how to manufacture the story, broken in the British press on 4 February, of a search for Madeleine’s bones in the selfsame Arade Dam.

However, in February 2008, Antonio Jimenez was thrown into a Spanish jail, having been remanded in custody on suspicion of involvement in the theft of £25 million worth of cocaine from a boat moored in Barcelona, at a time when he was the Head of the Catalonian Anti-Kidnapping and Anti-Trafficking Unit. Because he was a senior police officer at the time of the theft, he was also arrested on suspicion of: while in a public office, having corrupt relationships with drug dealers.

When news broke of Jimenez’s arrest on 23 February 2008, Clarence Mitchell issued a statement on the record saying: ‘Jimenez is nothing to do with us’. That was a deliberate lie, as you will see from the above and from the fuller article on our website.

It is also right to say that a second private investigator, Kevin Halligen, chosen by the McCann Team (including Clarence Mitchell) for the stated purpose of finding Madeleine, was also jailed, as you know, being incarcerated in Belmarsh Top Security Prison from October 2009 to June 2011 awaiting extradition to the U.S. on serious fraud charges.

That at least two of the McCann Team’s top investigators should already have ended up in prison must at the very minimum give rise for huge concern. Clarence Mitchell was on good terms with News International and Murdoch men Andy Coulson and Matthew Freud. You were also very closely associated with both men. In the ’phone hacking scandal, you refused to hold a public enquiry but were forced by events to do so.

In our two letters to you, we have, we believe, demonstrated to you many reasons why there should be a judge-led independent and open public enquiry into all aspects of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. The longer you delay in setting up such an enquiry, the more difficult it will be to get at the truth. Your own connections with leading Murdoch figures are once again likely to feature in any enquiry about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, therefore the sooner this enquiry is set up, the better for all concerned.

Furthermore, the British public have given generously to the Find Madeleine Fund. An enquiry is needed to find out, amongst other things, why their contributions have apparently been used to fund crooks who appear to have been following an agenda wholly other than that of finding Madeleine McCann.

In our last letter, we wrote:

The McCanns’ appeal to you and your reply were published in the Sun newspaper, clearly by prior agreement. You said in your public letter to Dr Gerald and Dr Kate McCann: “Your ordeal is every parent’s worst nightmare and my heart goes out to you both”. Such an approach strongly suggests that you and the Home Secretary have requested Scotland Yard only to look at the possibility that Madleiene was abducted, not at the other possibility that Madeleine died in her parents’ holiday apartment.

We consider that your own close ties to Rupert Murdoch, his family and his senior executives, may have contributed to your making the decision to commit £3½ million of taxpayer’s money to a Review with the express purpose, according to yourself, of wholly backing the McCanns’ agenda. The fact that the government chose in May 2007 to send Clarence Mitchell, a man with known ties to the Murdoch empire, and who was then the Head of the government’s Media Monitoring Unit, a man who boasted that his job was ‘to control what comes out in the media’, is reason itself for being sceptical about the nature and purpose of the whole McCann Team operation.

Finally, we conclude with some recent comments in support of the petition calling for a full judge-led enquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance:

“Madeleine deserves a fair enquiry, fingers crossed”.

“Like so many, I believe the mother knows more than she lets on - PLEASE get justice for Maddie”.

“We're treated no better than docile sheep by stinking corrupt governments and the 'ministry of truth' - mainstream media. Madeleine McCann deserves the truth to be told, we all deserve the truth”.

“Let’s have some justice for that little girl”.

”No more banned information no more spin doctors, no more secrets. Truth and transparency. For Madeleine”.

“There’s too much about this story that does not make sense. It needs to be investigated properly AND publicly with no secrets”.

“The truth always comes out in the end”.

“Justice for this poor little girl has not been forthcoming. The truth should be told”.

“Kate and Gerry should be forced to answer the 48 questions put to them by the police in Portugal”.

“Maddie needs justice and the public needs to see that justice has been done”.

“Of course there should be a full public enquiry into Madeleine McCann's disappearance.

"Please can you do a full and thorough enquiry including interviewing all who were there at the scene to find out what really happened to Madeleine and where she is”.

"Mr Amaral was simply doing his job. Please do not forget it was the British sniffer dogs that found evidence of Madeleine's death. Both the British and Portuguese police came to the conclusion that Madeleine was dead and that her parents were involved in her death. This MUST be investigated further”.

“Let's get the truth out - starting with the 48 questions Kate McCann has yet to answer!”

“If an enquiry is opened I think there are bigger fish that would be caught up in the net. That is why I doubt if a full public enquiry will ever be done”.

“What is it that the McCanns are afraid of? What might possibly come out in the end?”

“These people must be forced to answer the questions they have been asked”.

“A public enquiry needs to be opened straight away”.

"I think we, the British public, deserve the truth, something I know we're not getting from those two”.

“Two score and eight questions. 48 questions Kate. Answer them. Now. Then I might believe you”.

“I am sick of the McCanns blaming everyone but themselves”.[/size]

Once again we look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible in response to our four requests.

Yours sincerely,

Anthony Bennett

Secretary
The Madeleine Foundation

2nd MF letter to David Cameron re PUBLIC ENQUIRY INTO ALL ASPECTS OF MADELEINE'S DISAPPEARANCE

2nd MF letter to David Cameron re PUBLIC ENQUIRY INTO ALL ASPECTS OF MADELEINE'S DISAPPEARANCE

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