MADELEINE ADVISERS ARE GONE - Brunt

Very interesting news today on Martin Brunt's blog - spotted by 'Ruby' and she's posted the link on Facebook:

MADELEINE ADVISERS ARE GONE

The first UK specialists parachuted in to help Portuguese police find Madeleine McCann have left their jobs.

Det Supt Graham Hill and psychologist Dr Joe Sullivan helped the investigators narrow down a list of potential suspects and offered interview techniques.

They arrived in Praia da Luz within 48 hours of Madeleine's disappearance nearly four years ago, but diplomatic sensitivities delayed confirmation of their presence for several days.

They and colleagues later advised Leicestershire police who pursued British leads in the hunt for Madeleine.

The two men led the Behavioural Analysis Unit at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and are the latest in a small exodus of its staff.

CEOP insists the the unit is being retained and even expanded to improve the range of expertise it offers police forces around the world.

The unit has been at the forefront of dissuading certain interrogators from the 'Life on Mars' style of questioning.

Det Supt Hill is returning to Surrey Police, from where he was on a long secondment and Dr. Sullivan has not had his consultant contract renewed.

CEOP says both men will be missed and replaced and denies it is scaling down its child-centered operations as it prepares to be absorbed into the new National Crime Agency.


COMMENT BY TB:

I cannot overemphasise the importance of this article.

The whole question of why the two top men in CEOP's Behavioual Analysis Unit rushed out to Praia da Luz during Saturday 5 May needs probing (a good way to do this by the way would be at a FULL PUBLIC ENQUIRY into ALL aspects of Madeleine's disappearance as demanded by Alan-Marc Logoa in his petition).

It must be recalled, and emphasised, that these men in CEOP, plus probably MI5 officials, were the men who identified Robert Murat as '90% likely' from their profiling of him to have been 'the man who snatched Madeleine'.

Let us recall too that Jane Tanner only identified (wrongly of course) Robert Murat as the man she claimed to have seen at 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May 2007 AFTER she talked to staff from CEOP, staff from Leicestershire Police, and staff from Control Risks Group (or possibly all three).

I will post more on this later, but I want to leave this question in the minds of those reading this post: "Was there a concerted plan, at a high level, from Day One, to point the finger of suspicion at Robert Murat for abducting Madeleine?"

First, some relevant extracts from Chapter F of my article on the Madeleine Foundation website: "The Mystery of Robert Murat: From Arguido to Applause":






F. Jane Tanner identifies Robert Murat as the abductor and three more of the ‘Tapas 9’ make statements against him


Here I reproduce an extract from Gonçalo Amaral’s account, in ‘The Truth About A Lie’, of how he first became interested in Robert Murat. Amaral was the original senior investigating detective in the case until he was removed from the investigation on 3 October 2007.

The translation of this part of Gonçalo Amaral’s book was made by a person known on the Internet as ‘AnnaEsse’:

Gonçalo Amaral discusses the arrest of Robert Murat

QUOTE

I am about to make enquiries of the police officer on duty when an individual comes back from his walk and greets him as he passes.

‘You know that man?’

‘Yes, he presented himself to the GNR on Friday morning and offered his services as an interpreter. He is of English origin but speaks good Portuguese. He's called Robert Murat’.

As the law demands, all foreign people interviewed by the police must have the benefit of an interpreter. In this investigation, the considerable number of interviews we had to conduct in record time forced us to call on the services of volunteers.

‘And this guy, you checked him out? No criminal record or trouble with the law?’

‘No, no, it's all OK, but I didn't know he lived here. It's true that his house is on the route taken by the abductor’.

‘Stay here, carry on being friendly with him; I'm going to Portimão to see what we've got on him: we've got to find out more about this guy’.

I immediately telephone the team to alert them. The Director of the Department of Criminal Investigation in Faro has to take part in a meeting the same morning, where we will discuss the case of Robert Murat. We decide to request the latter's help again in order not to lose sight of him. We must act with the utmost speed, because Madeleine could be in one of the houses he has access to. The investigators continue to check the information we have about him. He is English, aged 33 and is separated from his wife.

The latter lives in Great Britain with their daughter; the latter is nearly the same age as Madeleine and looks like her. The English journalist to whom he gave this information during an interview was immediately distrusting of him and the reasons that motivated him to help the police. Murat has lived with his mother in Vila da Luz for several years, but he goes to England regularly. Back from his last stay in Exeter on May 1st, he has to return there on the 9th. He is ready to postpone his departure, desirous above all, he states, of helping the police to find Madeleine.

His behaviour starts to seriously intrigue us. He often makes reference to similar cases that happened in the United Kingdom and which he seems to know in detail. He displays suspicious curiosity and seeks to know more. He offers to help us identify possible suspects. He knows the workings of the Ocean Club and the habits of the holiday-makers very well. He even, allegedly, tried secretly to access the investigation files. It is also known that he visits web sites of a pornographic nature.

His mother has set up a desk near the Tapas restaurant in order to gather and give out information about Madeleine. We don't know if this woman's actions are philanthropic in nature, or if she is hoping to keep up-to-date with all the information circulating about the case. Members of the British agency, CEOP [Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre], take a close interest in Murat and work to develop his psychological profile.

If it's him that's holding Madeleine, we must monitor all his contacts and places he has access to. His house is therefore being closely watched. Technicians arrive from Great Britain with sophisticated equipment, capable of detecting the presence of people inside a building. Unfortunately, the characteristics of the building make this computer display impossible.

So, we stick to routine investigations and conventional tailing. This is how we discover his relationship with a married woman of German origin, Michaela Walczuch. She is 32 and works as an estate agent. She is the wife of Luis Antonia; a Portuguese man aged 33, a technician responsible for the maintenance of swimming pools. The couple have an 8 year-old daughter and live in Faro. The relationship is strange. Michaela is still living with her spouse, and Robert visits them as if it's no big deal. All of them seem happy with this situation. And the little girl? What does she think about it?

On May 12th, Robert Murat rented a car, driving it for miles over rough tracks for basic essentials. He explained later to us: that day, his mother had needed his car for her information desk. We are assuming that he noticed he was being followed.

We then decide to search his residence and the vehicles he uses. During the night of May 13th, the Prosecutor of the Republic and the judge go to the court in Portimão, where, in view of the growing suspicion and the urgency of the situation, a search warrant is issued to them.

Before searching his house, we wanted to assure ourselves that Jane Tanner recognises him as the individual she saw on the night of the disappearance. She is sitting inside an unmarked police car, whose tinted windows allow her to see out without being spotted. The vehicle is parked at the exact spot where she says she was on the night of May 3rd.

Robert Murat, anonymous amongst plain clothes police officers, goes up the road in the same way as the alleged abductor. Jane Tanner is adamant: it certainly is Robert Murat that she saw that night. She definitely recognises his way of walking. But does he resemble the description she painted previously?

The investigator, with whom Murat is on friendly terms, is with him in a bar until 2 o'clock in the morning. We are not about to relax surveillance. As soon as he gets home, police officers are stationed around his house in order to monitor all entrances. The crisis unit is buzzing; the teams are preparing for the search. It will be carried out at 7am - the legally designated time - when the journalists are not yet on the streets. The operation is kept secret. We request reinforcements from the GNR. For the moment, we have no evidence against Murat, only suspicions. If we had been certain that Madeleine was in the house, we wouldn't have had to wait for daylight to intervene. Scenes of crime specialists accompany us in the search for evidence.

Outside, two rainwater recovery tanks are explored with the help of divers. We pack up a few items of clothing to send to a laboratory that will carry out the search for fibres, hair, and traces of blood that possibly came from Maddie. The cars are also gone over with a fine tooth comb. Laptops are seized and their contents examined by specialists. We find a cutting from a British newspaper, dated 23rd September 2006, that refers to a case of paedophilia.

All Murat's statements are immediately checked. We check the places he says he went to with Michaela, looking for CCTV cameras or witnesses able to describe the clothes he was wearing that day. We would like to compare them with the description provided by Jane Tanner.

We ask him about a telephone call intercepted after the announcement of the disappearance. His response is very vague. We know that towards 11.30pm, Michaela ’phoned Murat. Then, he called a certain Sergei Malinka, and straightaway afterwards, Michaela. We will never know the content of these conversations; no one will give us plausible explanations.

The answers are evasive: ‘I no longer remember’, or ‘that was about the website for the estate agency’.

Sergei Malinka is Russian, aged 23. He works in computers and lives with his parents in Vila da Luz, 300 metres from the Ocean Club. His mother, a housewife, is employed by a cleaning company that does certain apartments for the club.

He is seeing a young Portuguese woman, aged 33, mother of a teenager. The wife of one of his associates, of British origin, states that in 2006, he boasted about having had sexual relations with a minor, aged 14, and related how the father had surprised them; he allegedly stated that currently he maintains a relationship with an older woman and her daughter at the same time. Interviewed, he refuted these allegations: he claims that it's vengeance on the part of his associate, unhappy with the way their shared company worked out.

Murat and Michaela say they intend to open an estate agency together. They were looking for a computer engineer to build a web site and had thus met Sergei. It was to discuss this that they arranged a get-together near the Ocean Club on May 2nd. Luis Antonio was seen in the area. Was he watching his wife? That speculation is hardly credible, since he seemed to accept his wife's relationship with Murat.

We ask about the reasons for Robert Murat's arrival in Vila da Luz on May 1st, four days after the McCanns' - the hypothesis of planned abduction is considered. Murat could have entrusted the observation to an accomplice, who would have chosen Madeleine and observed the parents' habits as well as their pattern of monitoring the children.

We want to know more about his circle of friends and the places they frequent. During the evening of the disappearance, he remembers having heard a siren shortly after 10.30pm. He was then in the kitchen with his mother. The next morning, at around 9 o'clock, he asked a passer-by what had happened, and that was how he learned about Madeleine's disappearance. He then decided to go and offer his help. The discovery of a key at Murat's house revives the hope of finally getting a lead. He tells us that it belongs to Michaela, and that it must have been dropped accidentally. Where was that key before it was found at his house? In Michaela's pocket? In her bag? We learn that it opens the door of a garage where Luis Antonio stores his maintenance products. A team is sent immediately to the part of Lagos where this garage is situated. The search proves as disappointing as the others. Nothing is found. Once again, no evidence of Madeleine's presence.

For the profilers, Murat is the guilty party. Since Murat's first interview, which they attended, the specialists have continued to refine the profile of the suspect. They have heard about the statement from one of his so-called childhood friends, put on file by the police department: according to him, Murat had an affirmed penchant for bestiality. He recounted his attempts at sexual relations with a cat and a dog, subsequently killed, he states, with cruelty. Moreover, he allegedly attempted to rape his 16 year-old cousin. This individual describes Murat as someone violent with behavioural problems, a sexual pervert, sadist, and misanthropist. We are somewhat sceptical. All the same, according to the English profilers, there is a 90% chance that he is the guilty party. That seems to us to be a bit too easy. We think that drawing conclusions based essentially on the statement of an ex-convict is rather dangerous.

As if the memory of the McCann family's friends suddenly came back to them, all - Rachael Oldfield/Mampilly, wife of Matthew Oldfield, Fiona Payne, wife of David Payne, and Russell O'Brien Jane Tanner's partner - now recalled having seen Murat on the night of May 3rd, shortly after the announcement of the disappearance, in the immediate vicinity apartment 5A. Meanwhile, of course, Murat's picture has been shown on television and in certain newspapers.

They themselves were in direct contact with him during the previous days. However, it is only on May 16th that they deliver this information to us. As for the officers of the National Guard who were on the spot, they didn't see him that night, only the next morning, when he came to offer his services as interpreter.

On July 11th at 10am, a confrontation is organised between the witnesses, Rachael Oldfield/Mampilly, Fiona Payne and Russell O'Brien, and Robert Murat. Nothing new comes out of it. The former persist in stating that the suspect was definitely in the area on the night of the disappearance. Murat denies the whole thing and even accuses them of lying. Each side stands its ground. The only positive aspect of this meeting: the McCanns' friends undertake to return to Portugal for the purpose of the investigation. That will not happen.

UNQUOTE

Discussion of Gonçalo Amaral’s chapter on Robert Murat

We’ll just pick up three preliminary points from Mr Amaral’s chapter on the questioning of Robert Murat.

First, the fact that Sergei Malinka’s mother was employed by a cleaning company that does certain apartments for the Ocean Club would give her access to those apartments; she would need a set of keys in order to do her job.

Second, it appears that the police returned the computers of Murat and Sergei Malinka to the two men on 18 May. That same day, the website of the Romigen company was updated (see below). The rapid return of the computers to Murat and Malinka has puzzled many IT experts, who wonder how thoroughly the police could have searched them in just a few days. The only way to retrieve erased images from a hard drive is to examine its records for weeks, at least. Sometimes months of analysis is necessary. Given the fact that Murat had both pornographic and encrypted material on his computer, and in view of the content of some of the witness statements that we have referred to briefly, it is hard to fathom why the police only kept the computers for a few days.

Third, regarding Sergei Malinka, we might just refer here to the findings of the Portuguese police after they seized Malinka’s computer and associated equipment and disks.

The report states: “This is the summary of the examination of nine mass storage devices (disks and memory sticks/cards) collected from Sergei Malinka's house. “Nothing was found of relevance for the case. In addition, 27 optical disks (CD ROMs) were analysed and found to contain pornography and, on one disk, bestiality”.

We will return in a moment to the matter of how Jane Tanner identified Murat as the suspected abductor, but first let us pause and note a few other significant aspects of Amaral’s account, namely the following:

· He is sceptical about the English advisers and criminal profilers who seem so sure that Murat is the likely abductor

· He is clearly also sceptical about the sudden recollection by three members of the ‘Tapas 9’ of having seen Murat on the night of 3 May

· He notes all the various claims about Murat’s possible sexual perversions and violence, his interest in pornography, and claims about his friend Sergei Malinka’s sexual interests. It appears he regards these as at least of possible relevance

· He is curious about the strange relationship ‘triangle’ between Luis Antonio, his wife Michael Walczuk, and Walczuk’s current romantic partner, Murat.

How Jane Tanner identified Robert Murat as the chief suspect

The McCanns’ friend Jane Tanner had claimed to have seen an abductor carrying Madeleine away from near the McCanns’ apartment at 9.15pm on the evening she was reported missing.

On Sunday 13 May, Jane Tanner positively identified Robert Murat as the man she had seen on the night of 3 May. Soon after 13 May, her partner Dr Russell O’Brien was to claim that he’d seen Robert Murat hanging around the Ocean Club the night Madeleine was reported missing. The following is an account of how her positive identification of Murat occurred.

On 13 May, Tanner was taken by a Leicestershire Police Officer, Bob Small, into a police van with darkened windows, from where she could see passers-by. Amongst those who walked by whilst she was hidden with police officers in the van was Robert Murat. She apparently instantly identified Murat as the probable abductor she had seen a few nights previously. Crucially, Robert Murat has poor eyesight and wears glasses all the time. However, when Tanner was asked to give a description of the abductor she claimed to have seen, she did not mention his wearing glasses.

Bob Small had already been in Praia da Luz for several days. Tanner originally claimed that when she first met Bob Small, she didn’t know who he was, and asked her partner, Russell O’Brien, who was with her, to write down the registration number of the car in which the policeman rode. But during the same questioning session, Tanner says that at that time she was taking her collaboration with the authorities ‘very seriously’ and that she didn’t even tell her partner [Russell O’Brien] that she was meeting Bob Small and why. We don’t therefore know when she was first introduced to Small; she has been evasive on the subject.

It had been on Sunday 6 May that Lori Campbell contacted Leicestershire Constabulary about Murat. A female CID Officer in the Leicestershire Constabulary [Folio 307 of the CD in the files] faxed the ‘Portugal Incident Room’ in Praia da Luz stating that Lori Campbell, a reporter from the Sunday Mirror, had been in contact. The Officer reported as follows:

“Lori has been speaking to an interpreter who has been helping the Portuguese authorities with the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. He has only given his name as ‘ROB’ and has not given any background information about himself. Lori has become suspicious of Rob as he has given conflicting accounts to various people and he became very concerned when he noticed his ’photo being taken by the Mirror’s photographer. ROB stated to Lori that he was going through a messy divorce in the U.K. at the moment and that he had a 3-year-old daughter just like Madeleine, who he is separated from at the moment. He made a big show of telephoning his daughter in front of reporters and Lori felt he was being too loud and making a big thing of speaking to his daughter on the ’phone. The things that ROB has said to Lori have raised her concerns about him. Could you please call Lori who is still in Portugal to establish further details to identify ROB in order to eliminate him from your enquiries on 07917 XXXXXX”.

This information was relayed immediately to Portugal - in stark contrast, we may note, to the way Leicestershire Police handled some other matters of potential interest, for example, their five-month delay forwarding the statements of Drs Katherine and Arul Gaspar to the U.K. police.

As journalist Paulo Reis commented: “Miss Campbell’s report must have hit the hot buttons, because Mr Murat came under suspicion and the PJ intercepted his telephone (see folios 1017 and 1267), picking up some interesting chats with Martin Brunt of SKY TV (see folios 1675 and 1692). But little else was picked up except for a conversation with ‘Phil’, a British Police Officer, whom Murat asked about the ways mobile ’phone signals could be tracked to specific locations. Mr Murat’s interest seemed to be whether such tracking could prove that he was at home during the late evening of Thursday 3 May 2007 as he claimed.

In the early afternoon of Sunday 13 May 2007, we now know that Jane Tanner spoke to what she called‘some of the people that Kate and Gerry brought in’. It has since been established that these almost certainly included two men, Kenneth Farrow and Michael Keenan, from a group called ‘Control Risks Group’ (CRG), a private security, research and intelligence agency which appeared to have no track record whatsoever of looking for missing children and seemed to operate covertly.

They had, it appears, arrived at Faro Airport on the flight from Gatwick that very morning. Some CRG staff may already have been in Praia da Luz before that flight. Mr Farrow is the ex-head of the Economic Crime Unit in the City of London Police and Mr Keenan had been a Superintendent from the Metropolitan Police with specialist fraud and investigative experience. These were just two out of a vast collection of professionals that seemed to descend on Praia da Luz in the days immediately following Madeleine going missing: public relations experts, British police officers, counsellors and advisers, Consular staff and private investigators. It is hard to know how some of them could realistically have been flown in for the purpose of assisting in an urgent search for Madeleine. Some of these people seemed much more suited to crisis management than to helping to find a missing child.

Returning to CRG, the question of who actually asked them to become involved and who agreed to pay for their services has never been made clear. Jane Tanner says they were men ‘brought in by Kate and Gerry’. A report in the Daily Telegraph suggested that they were a top-level ‘crisis management team’ who had been brought in by media advisers Bell Pottinger on behalf of Mark Warner. But what seems clear is that their initial mission was to advise Jane Tanner in connection with her possible identification of the abductor.

In fact, CRG is a private security firm, whose four main operating areas are: political and security risk analysis, corporate investigations, security consultancy and crisis response,,,[SNIPPED] They were founded by a man who has links to the Kevin Halligen-linked agency, iJet, though Kroll Inc.

It seems that no sooner had Jane Tanner finished speaking to the two top CRG men than she took a telephone call from Bob Small, a senior Leicestershire Police Officer already in Praia da Luz helping the Portuguese Police. He told her that the police wanted to see her. He actually made a mistake and said ‘the Spanish police’ needed to see her.

It is likely, by that time, that covert plans had already been made to induce Mr Murat to walk across the top of the road, north of Apartment 5A, where Miss Tanner claimed to have seen the ‘abductor’. This situation was thus the precise context in which she believed she could make identification.

Jane Tanner says that Mr Small then told her not to discuss anything with anyone, including her husband. She claims she followed this instruction to the letter, but questions have been asked about whether she could realistically have followed such an instruction. She was with her husband that day.

By this time, Murat was under suspicion but had not been made an ‘arguido’. He had been around the Ocean Club a lot from 4 May 2007 onwards and had translated the PJ’s interviews with, for example, Catriona Baker, Stacey Portz, Leanne Wagstaff and Amy Teirney (Folio 457).

It is very possible that sometime during that first week most of the ‘Tapas 9’ knew that Murat was coming under suspicion. Rumours and speculation about him were already circulating in Praia da Luz. Murat’s face had appeared on news bulletins. It appears, however, that by this time Jane Tanner had not yet been formally introduced to Murat, as some of the other members of the ‘Tapas 9’ had been, as a result of his translating their statements for the police.

In a section about Murat that was later deleted by the Sun, they also quoted former work colleague, Jo Stanton, who said: “If he didn't take his medication, he could be very Jekyll and Hyde. People did see him as creepy”. Jo Stanton once accused Murat of trying to nick his sale: “Rob just flipped out in seconds. He went berserk, eyes bulging. I was freaked out”.

Jane Tanner is adamant she has seen the ‘abductor’

Returning to Jane Tanner’s identification of Robert Murat as the abductor, arrangements were made for Miss Tanner to be collected by Mr Small and his PJ colleagues in a car park near to Mr Murat’s home at around 7.30pm that day. Gonçalo Amaral was in a meeting room at the Public Ministry, waiting to pounce if Tanner gave a positive identification.

Miss Tanner has given a rather dramatic account of being ‘worried sick’ that the ‘Spanish Police’ (as she called them) might be about to cart her off to a prison or to destinations unknown. So, she says, she got her partner Dr Russell O’Brien to walk with her to the rendezvous with Mr Small. That is another major reason for questioning whether she could possibly have kept secret from her partner (as she claims) the information that she was meeting Bob Small in order to identify a possible abductor.

If, as she claims, she did not discuss the identification operation with her husband, what precisely did she say to him? What did he think might be going on with his wife accompanying a Police Officer? Who looked after their children at this time and what did Tanner and O’Brien tell those who were looking after the children? Like many other questions in this affair, we don’t have answers, and this brings to mind Dr David Payne’s notorious claim to Feleicia Cabrita of the Sol newspaper, when he told her that he couldn’t talk to the newspaper because of a ‘Pact of Silence’ amongst the ‘Tapas 9’.

If Tanner had indeed discussed her meeting with Bob Small with her partner Russell, we might therefore reasonably deduce from that, that before very long all of the ‘Tapas 9’ group probably had more than a shrewd idea why Tanner had met with Bob Small.

The police went on to arrange to pick Tanner up by car very close to Murat’s home. One might ask, why so close? On their way to the car park, and just outside his home, Robert Murat, whom we know had met Russell O’Brien on the morning of 4 May, was driving his mother’s green VW Transporter. He stopped, got out of the VW and chatted, showing Tanner and O’Brien posters he had made to ‘Find Madeleine’, and generally rattling on about nothing in particular. This was the first time, so we are told, that Tanner had been introduced to Murat, but, as Paulo Reis pointed out: “Given the events that were about to follow, it is amazing she did not cry out ‘that’s him…that’s the person I saw: that’s the abductor!’” But she didn’t say a single word.

In her later ‘Rogatory’ interview with Leicestershire Police in April 2008, she claimed that she had been concerned at the time that ‘there was some strange conspiracy going on to abduct me’, adding that “Mr Small scared the daylights out of me”.

She continued as follows: “But that made me even more suspicious because it was like, so I think at that point, I think I actually spoke to Stuart [Stuart Prior, the lead Leicestershire Police investigator in Praia da Luz]”. It seems from other sources that she did indeed speak to Mr Prior and thus had no reason whatsoever to believe that she was about to be abducted by Mr Small or anyone else.

We know that Dr Russell O’Brien, Jane Tanner’s husband, had already been introduced to Murat. If Tanner did indeed have a discussion with her husband about the identification operation on Sunday with Bob Small of Leicestershire Police, that would have easily enabled him to point out Murat and enable her to identify him. Was it merely a coincidence that Dr O’Brien accompanied Tanner in the car to the police van with Bob Small?

When you add into the mix that the police van was just outside Murat’s house, and that on top of that they just ‘happened’ to bump into Murat, the whole sequence of events looks less and less as if they were by mere chance.

Tanner was taken away by Bob Small and the Portuguese Police and she says Russell wrote down their car registration number. This she says, in all seriousness, was so that he could rescue her if the Spanish Police abducted her. She was driven to another location and hidden in the back of an undercover surveillance vehicle, a police van, which was driven to a position near the side entrance to Apartment 5A, facing north.

Tanner then apparently saw three peoplewalk across the top of the road: but Mr Murat was the first to do so. It is not clear exactly what words Tanner used to the police at the time but, whatever she says now, it was very clearly strong enough to make them believe that she had positively identified Murat as the ‘abductor’. This was despite Murat not matching her verbal description, nor looking anything like the ‘egg man’ sketch of the alleged abductor that Tanner had approved (see below), nor wearing glasses. Was it perhaps the ‘power of suggestion’ at work in Jane Tanner’s mind?

As a result of Tanner’s certainty about Murat, immediate plans were made to declare Murat an ‘arguido’.

Three of the ‘Tapas 9’ now go on to identify Murat as a man they saw on the night Madeleine was abducted

Mr Murat’s home was searched on 14 May and he was made an ‘arguido’ the same day. His face was then on every TV screen in Europe.

It seems that what happened next, so we are told, is that a SKY NEWS report caused Rachel Oldfield/Mampilly to immediately walk to the apartment of Dr O’Brien and Jane Tanner saying she recognised Murat from her sighting of him at the Ocean Club on the night of 3 May 2007. Fiona Payne immediately corroborated this and then Dr O’Brien added that he had met Mr Murat during the searches for Madeleine on the night of 3/4 May. He says he had entered Murat’s telephone number into his mobile’s memory at that time.

Tanner, as we saw, claimed that she had not told her friends anything about her outing in the police van and said that their reactions to Mr Murat’s exposure on SKY NEWS were ‘spontaneous’. However, in her April 2008 interviews with the Leicestershire Police, Tanner made a slip. She said that her friends suggested to her that she should now speak to Bob Small about Mr Murat. That then raises the question of how they knew that Tanner had Bob Small’s contact details, if she had not already discussed Sunday’s identification event with them.

Tanner told Leicestershire Police [this is taken from the official Transcript]:

“Cos I’d got, I’d got his number from the day before (for/from?) them and you know, they sort of, you know, to say, oh is this, is this relevant and also I wanted to tell him that I’d seen him [Murat] on the way to doing the surveillance as well as, yeh, just for that so it’s just to make the point really that I think at that point, they [her ‘Tapas 9’ friends] didn’t know that Robert Murat had said he wasn’t there on that night”.

Later in the interview, Tanner said:

“…get to the truth of the matter and the truth is, you know they, when they asked me to ring Bob Small to make these statements, we didn’t even know that he’d, erm, hadn’t, hadn’t said he was there on the night and they didn’t know that I had done the surveillance…I mean when I got back, I didn’t even tell Russell what I’d done ’cos I took everything seriously what the police said in terms of, you know, not telling anyone”.

It has been suggested, by contrast, that there may have been a deliberate plan between members of the ‘Tapas 9’ and some of the police officers, criminal profilers from CEOP and private investigators from CRG who were talking to them, to frame Murat and have him made the leading suspect. We make no comment on that suggestion.

Tanner then duly ’phoned Bob Small, allegedly at her friends’ suggestion, and relayed her their concerns, but it is not clear whether or not she told Small, at any time, him about the compromising, supposedly accidental, encounter with Murat outside his house, just five minutes before she went on to identify him as the ‘abductor’. In most jurisdictions, this encounter would have completely invalidated Miss Tanner’s identification evidence. It would also have raised suspicions that there had been adeliberate plan for her to bump into the prime suspect (accompanied by someone who knew him), so that she would see what he was wearing and, based on such knowledge, identify him as the ‘abductor’ a mere five minutes later.

Whether this suspicion is true or not, it does not alter the fact that the identification exercise was thoroughly incompetent.

Murat denied being at the Ocean Club on 3 May 2007. But now there were three members of the ‘Tapas 9’ who suddenly claimed to remember having seen him there. Let it be noted that it was on Tuesday 15 May that these three members of the ‘Tapas 9’ first told Portuguese Police that they had seen Murat on the night of 3/4 May. They had therefore waited twelve days to do so.

There is nothing in the Portuguese Police CD files to indicate whether the supposedly 'accidental encounter' was ever reported to Bob Small. It may have been. The critical unanswered question, though, is whether or not Small reported this evidentially corrupting incident to the Portuguese Police and to the Portuguese judiciary [REST OF CHAPTER F SNIPPED]

I would say yes, as I have felt that was the case all along. Remember what Murat said about there being a big mess up?

I'm now off to check those names on the OC guest lists, to see if they are there and if so, where they were staying.

could this possibly mean that Robert Murat is about to sue j tanner and others

The names Hill and Sullivan do not appear on any of the OC daily lists that we have been given.

Which means, if this information is true and not just made up to link in with Kate's book, that they must have been staying there under an anonymous name.

The booking under this name, I would think is a good contender. It's right beside block 5 and contains the likes of Berry and Balu. Was the Gill really Hill ? If so, look when they originally checked in?, or should I say "parachuted" in.


G604 GILL (DONOS booking) 2/5/07 to 11/5/07 2 adults

garfy wrote:could this possibly mean that Robert Murat is about to sue j tanner and others

Read Tony B's very detailed article, "RM From Arguido to Applause" : you may not find an answer but you may well be prompted to ask many more questions about Murats role.

garfy wrote:Could this possibly mean that Robert Murat is about to sue J Tanner and others?

garfy, thanks for your nice comments yesterday, the answer to this, I am sure, is 'No'.

These are some points to bear in mind re Robert Murat.

He got his nice pay-off of 600 grand courtesy of the British libel courts.

Aa highlighted brilliantly in an article on the 'Eyes-for-Lies' website, Murat did not seem distressed and angry about having been made a suspect when he was interviewed around the time of getting his 600 grand.

At a meeting of the Cambridge Students Union on 5 May 2009, he received tumultuous applause while urging those listening to him that everyone should continue the hunt for Madeleine, and announcing that 'this is the first and last time I shall ever speak about the Madeleine McCann case'.

I think it's probable that Murat a long time ago, did file an action against Tanner in a Portuguese Court.

If this did happen, I suggest it was purely for window-dressing, and he never had the remotest intention of pursuing it. If he did file a claim, that was three years ago. Nothing is happening about it and nothing will happen.

All in this case is smoke and mirrors and yet more smoke and mirrors.

Ah....thanks tony also cheshire cat for the replies

Stella wrote:The names Hill and Sullivan do not appear on any of the OC daily lists that we have been given.

Which means, if this information is true and not just made up to link in with Kate's book, that they must have been staying there under an anonymous name.

The booking under this name, I would think is a good contender. It's right beside block 5 and contains the likes of Berry and Balu. Was the Gill really Hill ? If so, look when they originally checked in?, or should I say "parachuted" in.

G604 GILL (DONOS booking) 2/5/07 to 11/5/07 2 adults

Stella,

Keep up the excellent work, much strength to your elbow (or rather to your fingers on the keyboard), and thank you for your continuing contributions here.

Let's put it another way, who would fly into Praia da Luz on Wednesday 2 May, 2007, and why?

I think this might be a good time to remind us all of the 'People who Rushed to Praia da Luz', the title of an article I've published elsewhere.

For the purpose of this thread I shall simply list them here (in no particular order):


Alex Woolfall, Head of Crisis Management at Bell Pottinger.

Clarence Mitchell. Head of the government's Media Monitoring Unit

David Hopkins, Managing Director of Mark Warners

Three (?) police officers from Leicestershire Police, Including Superintendent/Commander Bob Small, who advised Jane Tanner on 13 May shortly before she adamantly identified Robert Murat as the abductor she''d seen 10 days earlier

British Embassy and Consular Officials

Two-plus members of Control Risks Group

Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff, including Sheree Dodd, described as the 'Press officer responsible to act as media liaison officer for the McCann family'.

The Director, Alan PIke and another leading Consultant (Martin Alderton) from the Centre for Crisis Psychology (CCP), the shadowy group from Skipton, supposedly experienced in disaster counselling

At least two members of the International Family Law Group

And now we can add Hill and Sullivan, top officers from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

And we mustn't forget Robert Murat, who also rushed out on 1 May 2007.

That's at least 19 names, most of the BIG names.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Just to publish this list again leads to astonishment at why so many powerful, 'top' people were all needed in Praia da Luz so soon, some of them rushed out there within 2 days - all for an abducted child who might have been found any hour?

But I would like to conclude by raising one particular question.

Namely, what made Alex Woolfall,Head of Crisis Management at Bell Pottinger (representing Mark Warners) and David Hopkins, Managing Director of Mark Warners, rush out there?

If this was a simple matter of a predator suddenly breaking into the McCanns' apartment and taking Madeleine, why was it necessary for the Managing Director of Mark Warners to be there in Praia da Luz in person and to have Alex Woolfall, Head of Crisis Management at Bell Pottinger, out there representing the company for two weeks as well? It was Woolfall of course who lied and said that the main theory in the early days was that Madeleine had just 'wantered off'.

I put all that side by side with Dr G McCann's comment that "We're not going out to enjoy ourselves", suggesting some other, hidden purpose.

Is it just possible that a group of people with a secretive, sinister or illegal purpose in mind booked their holiday in Praia da Luz with the active connivance of the managers of Mark Warners?

Tony Bennett wrote:Is it just possible that a group of people with a secretive, sinister or illegal purpose in mind booked their holiday in Praia da Luz with the active connivance of the managers of Mark Warners?

What sort of purpose might they have had in mind? it certainly seems strange that so many people were 'in place' before the abduction even supposedly happened.

What I will do over the next few days is compile a list of names and room numbers that checked in from the 29th onwards. That should flush out a few interesting names.

Wendy wrote:

Tony Bennett wrote:Is it just possible that a group of people with a secretive, sinister or illegal purpose in mind booked their holiday in Praia da Luz with the active connivance of the managers of Mark Warners?

What sort of purpose might they have had in mind? it certainly seems strange that so many people were 'in place' before the abduction even supposedly happened.

Not saying in any way that it is relevant in this case, Wendy, but it is a very sad fact, for example, as has been revealed in court cases and studies in this country and in the U.S.A., including a major one by the F.B.I., that a whole battery of chemicals are now used with which to sexually abuse children of various ages: drugs that sedate children, drugs that knock then unsconscious, drugs that cause memory loss, and so on. Again, believe it or not, serial child abusers actually get together with those who manufacture these drugs (and they include some big name pharmaceutical companies) to discuss and conduct experiments about such chemicals.

I can supply the references, but I suspect, like most people, you will not want to go to them as it is really all too sordid and depraved for words.