Joana Morais Blog: Francisco Moita Flores: «In the Maddie case someone lies»

Francisco Moita Flores: «In the Maddie case someone lies»

by Joana Morais 1 year ago



The Portuguese former PJ inspector Francisco Moita Flores participates in the documentary 'The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann' (DKiss). Today marks the 12th anniversary and there is still no trace of the small child.

by Julián Alía

Twelve years later, Madeleine's whereabouts are still unknown. On the night of May 3, 2007, she disappeared from her hotel(apartment) bedroom in Praia da Luz (Portugal), where she was staying with her parents Kate and Gerry McCann, who had gone out to dinner. The police inspector Francisco Moita Flores, about to turn 70, already retired and now connected to the world of literature and television, followed the case from the beginning, and now, is one of the faces of the documentary 'The disappearance of Madeleine McCann', which broadcasts tonight at DKiss at 10pm.

- What is your theory about this case?

- I have no theories, because according to a professor that I had: 'he who does not know, theorizes'. I was in Greece when the case happened and the first news I saw was on an English channel. I saw some detectives talking, who were supposed to have been hired by Maddie's parents, pulling out theories about what might have happened. It was so absurd what they said that I called a colleague to investigate the parents and the group of friends, which is something you have to do in a criminal investigation: investigate those closest to the victim.

- Why were they absurd?

- It is unthinkable that a group of parents go to a foreign country and abandon their children at home to go to dinner eighty or one hundred meters away. That was the first error in the investigation: all those theories of fantasies based on a network of paedophiles that abducted children. In a criminal investigation there must be no theories. We must raise hypotheses and questions for the events that occurred. Theories are for romances and movies, but a criminal investigation is very pragmatic, very practical, very empirical, and is not compatible with moral judgments. Those who theorize so much instead of focusing on the facts it's because they do not know how to investigate.

- How come twelve years later we still do not know what happened?

- The Judiciary Police has made mistakes. The first was to not consider the parents as suspects for the crime of abandonment and exposure that they did with their children. This crime is known in Portuguese law: crime of exposure and abandonment of minors. This is the main mistake that was made, and from this point on everything has been manipulated.

- Do you think it will be resolved?

- I do not think it's going to be resolved. The only way to solve this case would be to do a reconstruction of that night, because if you read the case files you realize that within the group of eight people who were there, there are people who are lying, and some, blatantly.

- How did you live the case?

- I experienced it with a lot of tension, obviously, for being such a mediatic case, but also with the necessary distance to be able to analyse it, because it has been a case that the public opinion has fallen in love with. Thanks to this distance I have been able to see the errors and the virtues of the case. One of the mistakes, as I said, was the sequence of theories that were impossible. It is impossible for an abductor, whoever he is, to enter quietly through the door, pick up the girl and go out with her in his arms through that specific window.

- Do you ever get used to these situations?

- Yes, you get used to dealing with crimes every day; it is our routine. But Portugal is the safest country in Europe and in the 40 years of democracy we have, besides Maddie, only 3 other children have disappeared. There was never a network of paedophiles, abductors ... That never existed in Portugal, it is an invention that has been made to protect the parents of Maddie and their group of friends.

- Why did you leave the police?

- I have been a policeman for many years and I have always been studying, but the moment came when I had to decide whether to pursue a university career or to continue with the police work and I chose the university option.

- Was it then when you started in the world of literature and TV?

- No, the writer's career has always been parallel to that of the police. Now I'm retired, but I'm still writing fiction.

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