A New Year's Day rant from McCanns' Portuguese lawyer, Marcos Aragao Correia - why it's significant

Tony Bennett wrote:On New Year's Day, a quite extraordinary and hysterical rant by Marcos Aragao Correia was published, claiming he was being 'persecuted'. After his persecution of Goncalo Amaral, that's a clear-cut case of 'pots and kettles'. Marcos Correia, it will be recalled, is the lawyer from Madeira who met with controversial Spanish detective agency Metodo 3 in December 2007, plotted with Metod0 3 to search the Arade Dam in January and March 2008, then secretly met with murderess-of-her-own-child Leonor Cipriano in Odemira Prison in April 2008 and gleefully agreed to take over and conduct her prosecution of Goncalo Amaral and four detectives whom she claimed had tortured her.

I'll reproduce the rant below, and then explain its significance in the case:

MARCOS CORREIA’S NEW YEARS DAY RANT

Gonc tries dirty tricks with Marcos
by christabel, 1 January 2012 at 7:45 pm

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http://justice4mccannfam.forumotion.com/t3758-gonc-tries-dirty-tricks-with-marcos

De: Marcos Aragão Correia - Advogado [Advocate/Lawyer]

Data: 1 de Janeiro de 2012 - 17:06hrs
Assunto: Urgent - Torture against Leonor Cipriano by the Portuguese State

Dear ***** *******,

I want to inform Amnesty International that I'm being a victim of illegal and brutal persecution by the Portuguese State.

As you know, I'm the lawyer of Leonor Cipriano, the Portuguese lady that was brutally tortured by police officers of the Portuguese State. This torture, as you also know, was proven by a Jury Court, and its verdict was confirmed by the Appeal Court. In the sequence, two police officers were convicted for torture-related crimes, one of them Gonçalo de Sousa Amaral, the leader of the police team, who was convicted for perjury to a 1 year and 6 months suspended jail sentence, because it was proven that he knew since the moment of the crime that Leonor Cipriano was tortured by the police, but he lied, saying that she wasn't.Nevertheless, after the jury verdict, the Portuguese State accused me of criminal libel for writing a report dated before the beginning of that same trial, where the testimony of Leonor Cipriano about the torture she suffered was divulged. A university teacher, President of a Portuguese association (ACED) that has divulged the report, was also accused. Despite the efforts to prove that the accusation was illegal, the Portuguese State has notified us on 23 December 2011 for us to be judged by a non-Jury court for criminal libel against the already convicted Gonçalo de Sousa Amaral!

This is clearly an evil and illegal manoeuvre by the Portuguese State in order to question the torture verdict, a verdict that can not be modified by another appeal (no more appeals are allowed).

In order to guarantee the human rights of Leonor Cipriano and me as her lawyer, we ask Amnesty International to intervene urgently, denouncing publicly this absolutely illegal court action against us.

Notification of the Portuguese State attached.

Thank you very much!

Kind Regards,

Marcos Aragão Correia,
Lawyer for Leonor Maria Domingos Cipriano.


[Note: Very slight corrections have been made to the wording of Marcos Correia’s letter, only where necessary for meaning and grammar - T.B.].

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Why this rant?

Shortly after the two searches of the Arade Dam, Marcos Correia became the lawyer for Leonor Cipriano, the evil co-killer of her own daughter. We now know that he did so at a pre-arranged meeting with her at Odemira Women’s Prison on 8 April 2008.

We know also that on that same day, Marcos Correia had a discussion with the lady Governor of Odemira Prison, Ana Maria Calado, who no doubt facilitated the visit.

The fact that he was now representing Leonor Cipriano was withheld by her and Marcos Correia from her then lawyers, who were shocked to be told at the opening of the trial of Dr Amaral and his four co-accused detectives, in October, that she had appointed Marcos Correia to represent her over six months previously.

No sooner, then, had Mr Correia had finished his fruitless searches of the Arada Dam, in conjunction with Metodo 3, than he was busy arranging to represent Leonor Cipriano - also in conjunction with Metodo 3.

A newspaper report later that year said: “Marcos Aragão Correia also met the director of Odemira prison, Ana Maria Calado, who confirmed suspicions about Cipriano's treatment, noting that she was ‘shocked about the conditions in which Cipriano entered the prison’.”

A document was submitted to the ‘top judicial authorities’ in Portugal at the time (April 2008) by Marcos Correia. In actual fact, it was submitted to the Portuguese Justice Minister on 8 April 2008, the very same day that Correia met the Women's Prison Director and Leonor Cipriano. It is this document which has resulted in Marcos Correia receiving notice of prosecution on 23 December last year.

Goncalo Amaral claimed that the document was full of lies about him and about the Leonor Cipriano case.

The document was actually submitted by Correia under the title of the ‘human rights’ organisation he had helped to set up 10 years earlier, ACED. He then submitted the document to Amnesty International and to StateWatch, who clearly swallowed its contents hook, line and sinker, obviously believing that Marcos Correia was telling the truth (!). Manifestly, they were poorly informed of his track record of not telling the truth.

The document was subsequently published by StateWatch as their Report No. 29207, and was titled: “Portugal: Report on torture suffered by Leonor Cipriano”. It states: “SOS Prisões and ACED produced a report that they sent to high-ranking Portuguese authorities with competencies in this field concerning the allegations of torture suffered in September 2004 by Leonor Cipriano at the hands of the judicial police in their offices in Faro”. The links for those who want to go to straight to the source are here:

]http://database.statewatch.org/searchdisplay.asp?grpid=20
]http://database.statewatch.org/article.asp?aid=29207

Among the contents of the report were these paragraphs:

QUOTE

“The report concludes that the testimony of Leonor Cipriano and of the Prison Director, as well as other available evidence, are convincing in terms of proving that a crime of torture was committed by officers of the Portuguese judicial police.

“It condemns the use of ‘medieval methods’ to ‘extract confessions at all costs, even if they are false’, as ‘inadmissible’ and as ‘harmful for Portugal's image as an EU member that defends human rights and has a modern legal order’ and, as such, argues that these practices must be punished in ‘exemplary’ fashion, or the Portuguese citizenry will lose faith in the judicial system”.

UNQUOTE

The report ends with a message from Leonor Cipriano, who, the report claims, ‘was treated as a monster’ as a result of the horrible nature of the crime she was accused and found guilty of committing:

“I hope that my daughter Joana appears, not only to be with her again, but also to show the world that it was the gentlemen officers of the judicial police who tortured me and who are the real monsters”.

Source:
Relatório sobre Tortura de Leonor Cipriano, 8.4.2008, ACED - Associação Contra a Exclusão pelo Desenvolvimento, SOS Prisoes - report (pdf)

In Marcos Correia’s rant, he also mentions alleged persecution of “A university teacher, President of a Portuguese association (ACED) that has divulged the report…”

This would appear to be a refernce to Antonio Perdo Dores, who made a separate complaint, alleging persecution by the prison service, to StateWatch, reference and link complaint No. 29244:

http://database.statewatch.org/article.asp?aid=29244 [/size]

The Statewatch summary of this complaint states:

‘Portugal: Head of observatory on prisons charged with ‘offending’ prison guard service’: Statewatch News Online, April 2008

“Antonio Pedro Dores, sociologist and Professor at Lisbon University and Director of the association ACED (Associação Contra a Exclusão pelo Desenvolvimento), which was established in 1997 and runs an observatory on prisons, faces charges of ‘offending a collective person, body or service’ levelled at him by the SNCGP (Sindicato Nacional do Corpo da Guarda Prisional, national trade union of the body of prison guards). ACED is a member of the Coordenadora para la prevención de la tortura network to prevent torture and of the European Civil Liberties Network”.

This complaint does not seem to be connected in any way with Goncalo Amaral’s complaint against Marcos Correia in respect of the controversial report Correia despatched to the Portuguese judicial authorities on 8 April 2008.

We published a lengthy, 55-page, in-depth article on Marcos Correia on our website dated 7 April 2010. We had to take it down in August 2011 in the face of threats from the McCanns’ lawyers, Carter-Ruck.

In that article, we wrote the following about a legal action by Goncalo Amaral against Mr Correia:

QUOTE

“It is a little-known fact that back in April 2008, Gonçalo Amaral began a lawsuit against Marcos Aragão Correia, claiming he had been defamed and vilified by him.

“Over a year later, on 16 June 2009, Gonçalo Amaral filed an addendum to his original lawsuit. As was reported at the time, for some strange reason the Minsteria Publico (the ‘Public Ministry’, or what we would call the Ministry of Justice) had by that time delayed the hearing of Mr Amaral’s complaint for 15 months, and at the time of writing (April 2010), his case has still not been heard, two years later. Yet the same Ministeria Publico was apparently able to expedite the hearing of the case against Mr Amaral brought by convicted murderess and serial liar Leonor Cipriano. Here, then, is another very powerful indicator that the persecution of Gonçalo Amaral in the courts has been politically motivated”.

UNQUOTE

It is this very action, begun in April 2008, that seems now to have surfaced in the prosecutor’s letter to Marcos Correia, which has so upset him. Dr Amaral was accusing Mr Correia of having lied and defamed him in the April 2008 report. The charitable explanation for this extraordinary delay of nearly four years in bringing this matter to court may be that the Portuguese police have been faced with a complex investigation into Dr Amaral’s claims about Mr Correia’s report - and have only just now established that it looks as though Mr Correia may have lied.

It is not, as some uninformed McCann-supporters have falsely claimed, a last-ditch action by Dr Amaral ahead of the forthcoming final chapter in the long-running libel case of McCann & McCann -v- Amaral. It is a case he brought nearly 4 years ago which is only just coming to court. As the English legal disctum has it: "Justice delayed is justice denied".

So what is the significance of this development?

Simply this.

Up until October 2010, when the Portuguese Appeal Court overturned the Lisbon High Court and ruled that Goncalo Amaral's book 'The Truth About A Lie' could once again be sold, the tide seemed to be running against Dr Amaral.

The tide turned further in Dr Amaral's favour in March 2011, when the Portuguese Supreme Court upheld the Appeal Court's decision to allow Dr Amaral's book to be distributed once again.

Now the tide has turned still further. Marcos Correia may have won a battle when Dr Amaral was handed an 18-month jail sentence based on the highly questionable evidence of his client Leonor Cipriano.

But he might now be about to lose the war. It may have taken the prosecutor's department over 3 years to investigate Dr Amaral's claim that Marcos Correia's report contained a load of lies. But it looks as though the prosecutor's office agrees with Dr Amaral, hence the impending prosecution of Marcos Correia.

His lies may be about to be exposed.

No wonder he is near-hysterical.'

candyfloss wrote:Oh dear, he's not a happy bunny is he. His cage is well and truly rattled - Am I reading it right that he is being sued for libelling Goncalo Amaral?

the Portuguese State has notified us on 23 December 2011 for us to be judged by a non-Jury court for criminal libel against the already convicted Gonçalo de Sousa Amaral!

.....the Portuguese State accused me of criminal libel for writing a report dated before the beginning of that same trial, where the testimony of Leonor Cipriano about the torture she suffered was divulged. A university teacher, President of a Portuguese association (ACED) that has divulged the report, was also accused. Despite the efforts to prove that the accusation was illegal,

the Portuguese State has notified us on 23 December 2011 for us to be judged by a non-Jury court for criminal libel against the already convicted Gonçalo de Sousa Amaral!

Gonçalo Amaral has asked for compensation of three thousand euros [£2,500] agaisnt Marcos Aragão Correia and Pedro Antonio Dores, President of the Association Against Exclusion for Development (ACED) [A Human Rights organisation founded by Marcos Correia in 1997