He Made it by Blacksmith

Another good read

http://blacksmithbureau.blogspot.com/2010/10/usually-ass-but-not-always.html


Friday, 22 October 2010


He made it





The first thing to say about the appeal verdict is that it represents a personal triumph for Goncalo Amaral.
Yes, he has had a dedicated band of volunteers, chiefly in Portugal, assisting him with appeals for legal funding and offering strong moral support; yes, he has had lawyers to represent him and the vocal support of some ex-police officers. But it is Amaral and Amaral alone who has risked absolutely everything since writing his book, “to recover my good name,” as he said, “which was publicly sullied while the institution that I served for 26 years, the PJ, did not allow me to defend myself.” In pursuing that matter of honour he triggered a nightmare of dubious criminal accusations, disgusting, indeed almost unbelievable, insult and abuse and a determined and well-financed attempt by the lawyers of two countries and their clients literally to destroy him, a campaign which came perilously close to succeeding and which really was, for once, like something out of Franz Kafka.
From the sidelines distant well-wishers such as we at the Bureau have been free with advice and, on occasion, criticism, the latter prompted by the belief that Goncalo Amaral might be underestimating the forces against him and fears for his capacity to survive the onslaught (only when this affair is at an end will the public discover just what Amaral’s family have suffered). The Bureau was wrong: Goncalo Amaral and his family have survived and his way of doing things has been vindicated. It is an extraordinary achievement.
Now, the verdict. The human rights aspect has been dealt with elsewhere and we won’t repeat it. What we want to highlight are the implications of the rest of the judgement: they are much worse than the McCanns could possibly have expected and that is why the pair have been unable so far to formulate a response.In clear and unambiguous language the judgement plants a stick of dynamite under the entire McCann case as presented to both the public and the legal system since July 2008.

When those two good Catholics, Kate & Gerry McCann, are safely tucked up at night, dreaming perhaps of the merits of Christian magnanimity to one’s enemies, there may well be a bible under one pillow. And under the other? Probably a copy of their other holy book, the Prosecutors’ archiving report, the Humpty Dumpty report as the Bureau has described it.
The McCanns, their lawyers and their associates have staked everything on making it the mainspring of their cause, as we have chronicled in our previous posts. Its misuse began with a pre-emptive strike by the parents and the loathsome Mitchell when, in July 2008 before the document had been translated in the UK, they fed grossly distorted extracts of it to the UK press, extracts which, to their everlasting shame, mocked the efforts of the policemen who had searched for the McCanns’ own flesh and blood.
Faced with the Truth of the Lie and the situation that a failure to sue Amaral would be taken as an admission of guilt the search was on for a firm basis for libel actions. It was found by using the fact that in the UK and most other countries a previous criminal court verdict is accepted as definitive: the trial evidence can be quoted but it must be done fairly and without any attempt, for example, to cast doubt on an acquittal, otherwise it is an open and shut libel.
With the contempt for the Portuguese that has characterised all their efforts so far, oh-so-clever Team McCann hi-jacked Humpty Dumpty for its own purposes. Their lawyers equated the prosecutor’s (civil servants’) report with a judicial (courtroom) finding of guilt or innocence thus providing, they hoped, the same cast iron protection as a courtroom acquittal.
It was, of course, a bluff but a very powerful one because of the potential legal costs of proving them wrong. Nevertheless they buttressed this sleight of hand with the further claim that the report was both the objective summation of the investigation and, based on the evidence, an official and definitive dismissal of of the case against them. That is how it has been used ever since.
Until last week, that is. The McCanns can reach under their pillows and chuck the report in the bin: the verdict of the judges has blown the fib away, as we shall show in the next posting.