'Portuguese police should sue McCann's official spokesman', claims newspaper

By DAVID WILKES
Last updated at 16:14 17 April 2008

Comments (0)
Add to My Stories
Kate and Gerry McCanns' spokesman should be sued for libel for accusing Portuguese police of leaking the couple's statements to the media, it has been claimed.
The statements revealed how the couple's missing daughter Madeleine asked her mother on May 3 last year - hours before she disappeared - 'Mummy, why didn't you come when we were crying last night?'.
They emerged last week as Mr and Mrs McCann, of Rothley Leicestershire, travelled to the European Parliament to promote a campaign for a child alert system.
Their official spokesman Clarence Mitchell accused Portuguese police of leaking the statements to derail the trip to Brussels.

A Portuguese newspaper has claimed Clarence Mitchell (right) should be sued for libel
Today a Portuguese newspaper claimed that Mrs McCann's 'Madeleine in tears' statement does not form part of the official police file.
It is understood that after they were interviewed by the police, secondary interviews were conducted in English with Mr and Mrs McCann by private investigators for the couple's own security and that these were passed to the police.
The investigation is subject to Portuguese judicial secrecy laws, preventing the statements from being made public.
But a source close to the investigation told the newspaper Correio da Manhathat: "On the day in which it's opened to the public, it will be easy to prove the declarations are not there. Then it will become clear this leak cannot have come from within the PJ."

The source reportedly added that "Mr Mitchell should be the subject of a libel action for harm caused to the reputation of elements of Portimao's criminal investigation department, for having 'unfairly accused' them of passing on information from the investigation to the media."
Yesterday Mr Mitchell said: "Yet again, I refuse to be drawn into a running argument with the usual anonymous police sources over this. Despite everything that has been said about me I retract nothing.
"The police, either officially or unofficially, have so far failed to explain how material that was in their possession as part of their files emerged in the public domain on the very day Kate and Gerry were making positive headlines in Europe."
Portuguese police declined to comment last night.
Earlier this week detectives investigating four-year-old Madeleine's disappearance branded Mr Mitchell 'a manipulative liar'.
The head of the Portuguese police federation, Carlos Anjos, accused him of engineering a fight with officers to sabotage a reconstruction of the disappearance.
In an extraordinary turn of events, Mr Anjos also told another Portuguese newspaper, Jornal de Noticias, his union was offering advice to officers who felt they had been identified by Mr Mitchell's leak claims and wanted to take legal action.
The latest claim in Correio da Manhathat is another sign of the deteriorating relationship between the McCanns and the Portuguese police. Officers have been infuriated by the couple's growing political influence.
Mr Mitchell has already categorically denied a claim in another Portuguese newspaper that he leaked the police statements to Spanish television journalist Nacho Abad. "Why on earth would I?" he said.
Mr Abad has said the statements did not come from Mr Mitchell or the McCann's but refused to reveal his source.


Read more: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

SNIPPED:The source reportedly added that "Mr Mitchell should be the subject of a libel action for harm caused to the reputation of elements of Portimao's criminal investigation department, for having 'unfairly accused' them of passing on information from the investigation to the media."
Yesterday Mr Mitchell said: "Yet again, I refuse to be drawn into a running argument with the usual anonymous police sources over this. Despite everything that has been said about me I retract nothing.
"The police, either officially or unofficially, have so far failed to explain how material that was in their possession as part of their files emerged in the public domain on the very day Kate and Gerry were making positive headlines in Europe."

The whole thing seems obvious to me... Crying incident not in PJ files. How and why did it emerge when it did?
Seeing as Team McCann live by the motto 'no publicity is bad publicity', I think it followed this recipe:
1)Kate and Gerry 'make positive headlines' in Europe
2)Release 'crying incident' purporting it to be a leak from PJ
3)Complain about nasty bullying PT police, 'ruining' Kate and Gerry's work in Europe

Et, voila! A double whammy of 'Kate+Gerry=Good Guys' 'PT Police=Bad Guys'
Easy and so Team McCann, spin, lie and spin some more for good effect.