A Voice for Madeleine - Petition Update

sharonl wrote:
However, the said reviews have not, so far, lead to sufficient evidence nor to new leads that could force the reopening of the process that was archived by the Portuguese Public Ministry back in July 2008. It is important for the Portuguese institutions and people targeted in this petition to know that, we, the public and tax payers from both the UK and Portugal, demand that the costs of those reviews bear fruit, and that only the reopening of the process, and thus of the investigation is considered as a successful outcome.

russiandoll wrote:Melody, I cannot find any reference to this or these words on Joana's site...

as for the same motives as SY and so nothing but a costly PR exercise.........where is the evidence of SY's motives being nothing but a whitewash? I understand why some fear this will be the case, but where is the actual evidence that all this money and man hours are being wasted on a PR exercise? PR for whom exactly? Not for a pair of nonentities like the McCanns .

russiandoll wrote:Melody, I cannot find any reference to this or these words on Joana's site...

as for the same motives as SY and so nothing but a costly PR exercise.........where is the evidence of SY's motives being nothing but a whitewash? I understand why some fear this will be the case, but where is the actual evidence that all this money and man hours are being wasted on a PR exercise? PR for whom exactly? Not for a pair of nonentities like the McCanns .

Genbug wrote:

russiandoll wrote:Melody, I cannot find any reference to this or these words on Joana's site...

as for the same motives as SY and so nothing but a costly PR exercise.........where is the evidence of SY's motives being nothing but a whitewash? I understand why some fear this will be the case, but where is the actual evidence that all this money and man hours are being wasted on a PR exercise? PR for whom exactly? Not for a pair of nonentities like the McCanns .

Russiandoll, Joana posted it on Facebook this morning.

*~Melody~* wrote:Both of them can't be right. Either Goncalo is right or Joana is right. one of them is going to lose credibility at this rate.

justme3 wrote:From Joana's site:



Radio interview with National Deputy Director of the Judiciary Police Pedro do Carmo



The Judiciary Police (PJ) guarantees that there are no new evidence regarding the disappearance of Maddie McCann, to prompt the reopening of the case.

The clarification was given ​​to Antena 1 by the National Deputy Director of the PJ, Pedro do Carmo, who explained that the PJ team of investigators from Oporto was established one year ago, working in collaboration with the British police.

The goal is to re-examine the elements of Investigation that began in 2007. Diligences will only be made if and when proven that they are necessary.

Jornal de Notícias advanced this morning that the English and Portuguese police have not set aside a possible reopening of the process.



http://joana-morais.blogspot.com/2012/03/radio-interview-with-national-deputy.html

*~Melody~* wrote:Both of them can't be right. Either Goncalo is right or Joana is right. one of them is going to lose credibility at this rate.

aiyoyo wrote:

*~Melody~* wrote:Both of them can't be right. Either Goncalo is right or Joana is right. one of them is going to lose credibility at this rate.

Depends how you see it. Both are not wrong either. No credibility rating risk at all here.

Goncalo has policemen as friends hence inside information; while Joana expressed an opinion - it is just her view.

If you think about it, only new evidence like the body is discoverd, some one fessed up, or something like that can justify a reopening.
Else combing files looking for missed clues and found new elements that can be further explored is not going to get it re-opened because it is not considered fresh elements. It is existing elements now given fresh eyes, new approach new technology and methodology to bring out the salient bits in the nailable elements for its purpose.

Suspecting Yard is there to whitewash is one thing, the PJ as well? What's in it for the PJ?
Think about it, if portugal agrees to a collective white wash all they'd to do is let the case remain closed forever and refuse to reopen come what may. Why is there a need to spend money and resources to achieve something that can be left alone?

If this review is just a hugh PR exercise colluded by both countries government who spend indecent money to arrive at that objective then a petition would be a bloody waste of time IMO and bloody useless for its purpose. Think about it - would authorities determined to whitewash it at all costs bow to a petition? On what basis? The legal basis to justify a reopening is "fresh new evidence", short of that I believe pressure by a few thousands would fall on deaf ears.

Dont let me discourage people, but those are my opinions. I dont believe for a mo the review is whitewash. My fear is new approach might not be sufficient its purpose - all depends on the methodology Yard and PJ will use to progress the matter.

russiandoll wrote:I hope that definitively ruling out abduction and definitively ruling in death or the body being in 5a would lead to an absolute demand for a reconstruction and interviewing under caution of the entire group. How on earth can a shelving hoping for new evidence be justified after an abduction has been ruled out and a death ruled in? A joint review concludes that the story being peddled 5 years ago was a lie and that a deat occurred, it is not logical to conclude all members of that group were unaware of this so surely to God the police need to pursue it?

tigger wrote:

aiyoyo wrote:

*~Melody~* wrote:Both of them can't be right. Either Goncalo is right or Joana is right. one of them is going to lose credibility at this rate.

Depends how you see it. Both are not wrong either. No credibility rating risk at all here.

Goncalo has policemen as friends hence inside information; while Joana expressed an opinion - it is just her view.

If you think about it, only new evidence like the body is discoverd, some one fessed up, or something like that can justify a reopening.
Else combing files looking for missed clues and found new elements that can be further explored is not going to get it re-opened because it is not considered fresh elements. It is existing elements now given fresh eyes, new approach new technology and methodology to bring out the salient bits in the nailable elements for its purpose.

Suspecting Yard is there to whitewash is one thing, the PJ as well? What's in it for the PJ?
Think about it, if portugal agrees to a collective white wash all they'd to do is let the case remain closed forever and refuse to reopen come what may. Why is there a need to spend money and resources to achieve something that can be left alone?

If this review is just a hugh PR exercise colluded by both countries government who spend indecent money to arrive at that objective then a petition would be a bloody waste of time IMO and bloody useless for its purpose. Think about it - would authorities determined to whitewash it at all costs bow to a petition? On what basis? The legal basis to justify a reopening is "fresh new evidence", short of that I believe pressure by a few thousands would fall on deaf ears.

Dont let me discourage people, but those are my opinions. I dont believe for a mo the review is whitewash. My fear is new approach might not be sufficient its purpose - all depends on the methodology Yard and PJ will use to progress the matter.

Thanks for that, the voice of reason!
I think the best we can hope for is a conclusion that there is no evidence of an abduction but there is evidence of a death in the apartment.
The case may remain shelved but 'open' for new evidence to come along.
I'm also thinking that no abduction may mean the end of the Fund.

The question of who can get away with what politically in the United Kingdom has caused serious difficulty between the Bureau and our Portuguese friends in the past. Perhaps I can make one last effort to explain the facts before new stresses appear.

This very lengthy post is aimed at Portuguese and other non-British posters to assist them in understanding UK law and politics. I have no intention of debating the matter and I am explicitly not addressing British people.

The UK police are not servants of the state

As the civil liberties group Civitas writes, “When officers join the police force they swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen, not the prime minister. Unlike many other forces, British police have never been servants of the state: officers' powers are personal, used at their own discretion and derived from the Crown.”
British government passes democratic legislation which each local police force is then expected to implement in its own way. Scotland Yard is the alternative name for the Metropolitan Police service, the local police force for London, which in a typically British manner also carries out duties on behalf of the whole nation, such as anti-terrorist work.

The British fear anyone with too much power

Why is this typically British? Because the essence of British politics is to disperse power in order to deny individuals the ability to grab too much for themselves. The intellectual Labour politician Richard Crossman expressed this principle most clearly half a century ago when he described the British constitution as one that deliberately makes it impossible for any one person to know exactly where the “levers of power” are.

Obviously if you can’t locate the levers you can’t take the power, just as if you can’t locate the national radio station you can’t make your coup stick. The fact that Crossman was unprincipled himself, famously being assisted by Carter Ruck to win a libel case by perjury, made no difference, just as the fact that politicians and police as individuals can be crooks makes no difference either. What matters is how much such bastards can get away with and Crossman finished his career by introducing parliamentary committees, the sort watched in action on the net recently, to disperse powers even more. It is this attitude to political and administrative power—one of fear – which still distinguishes the UK from all other European nations.

For this reason the British will not permit the establishment of a national police force whose head might become over-powerful, as Hoover did in the USA last century, despite the efficiency advantages that such a force would provide. It is not permitted purely for political – that is questions of power – reasons. So the functions like anti-terrorism which would be most efficiently dealt with nationally are instead given to a local police force, which reports to a an elected local police authority in an oversight role, just as Scotland Yard does.

There’s nobody there

This means that there is no head of criminal investigation in the UK corresponding, say, to the head of the PJ. The UK government has no right to know the details of what a local police force is investigating. It has no right to nominate, or dismiss, the heads of specialist squads. The prime minister has no right to ask for the details of any investigation and he has no right to see any Scotland Yard investigation report. I need hardly add that by the time the prime minister is briefed on the outcome of an investigation in its broad details the briefing notes will have had to come up through a chain of command and oversight to the Home Secretary. And that means that the information will be safely and widely dispersed.

A prime minister cannot “order an investigation” and the idea of an investigation being tailored to his wishes is simply laughable. He does not have the constitutional or physical/structural power to do it. A prime minister cannot lay down the terms of reference of an investigation. An investigation by the local police force for the capital, Scotland Yard, has to go through the legal system, not the political system – i.e. its conclusions must not go to the government.

The only member of the government who is allowed to involve himself in the details of a case – after it has been prepared, not before – is not the prime minister and not the home secretary but the attorney-general and then only where there is a so-called public-interest question and the government as a whole have authorised him to consider it. The attorney-general is both a lawyer and a politician. Dispersal again.

The prime minister has no right of access to the review’s work

When the Scotland Yard review is completed the prime minister can request a copy of its main recommendations through the Home Secretary and the local police authority. He cannot act on those recommendations for they are not addressed to him or his government and he cannot decide whether they will be published or not. He cannot authorise or refuse criminal proceedings. Not only can he not issue instructions as to what should happen there is no one person to whom he could turn to instruct. The results of an investigation must go to the Crown Prosecution Service, not to the “government”.

The McCanns and politics

The UK accepted that the McCann case was a Portuguese investigation. As was their right the then UK government, believing that public opinion was strongly in favour of helping the McCanns, offered UK police assistance to the Portuguese by requesting, not ordering, assistance from UK forces. Again Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had no right whatever to see the details of that co-operation and the operational files of both the Leicester police and Scotland Yard have never been made available to them – by law.

Of course this became a political question after a time because of the international relations angle and the friction that was being caused to UK/Portugal relations. But it cannot be emphasised too strongly that just as the prime minister had no authority over the British part of the investigations so the British ambassador had not the slightest power to influence the UK end of the investigation whether he might have wished to or not. We don’t let ambassadors get away with that sort of stuff in the UK, again by law. And UK policemen, who are never in a position long enough to develop a political power base, don’t like politicians or ambassadors much.

The failure of the McCanns to return to Portugal also had a political “dimension”, just as the Assange affair has, but the reason they failed to return had nothing whatever to do with political intervention: the requirements of a European Arrest Warrant demand that prima facie evidence of a crime be provided by the extradition seeker and the Portuguese did not provide it.

The McCanns, backed up by a public petition, had every right to ask for some sort of action of the government in a situation where nobody was looking for the infant daughter of two British citizens. Cameron, after consultation with the home secretary, agreed to authorise it. Had he refused to do so then the McCanns, with their deep publicly-provided pockets, would have had the right to seek “Judicial Review” in court; in such proceedings a judge would decide whether the government’s decision to refuse resources was “reasonable” or not from the legal, not the political, perspective and possibly rule that the decision must be reconsidered. Governments often lose such judicial review proceedings.

Cameron, a very able politician and a thoroughly decent man, said yes in a way that the McCanns did not anticipate; everybody except those criminally involved will gain from his decision. What the Portuguese will or will not do, how their legal and political systems will deal with events is something that I, as an overseas outsider with a respect and affection for, but no deep knowledge of, Portugal simply don’t know. Claims of a whitewash in the UK by those similarly placed but in the opposite direction simply diminish the stature, credibility and, ultimately, the relevance of those who make them.

david_uk wrote:Perhaps the PJ and the SY will come to some agreement that will find mutually agreeable and one that whill avoid any more cost spent on more investigaion than is needed and certainly avoid cost of trials. I`m going to guess that they will firm up the evidence the PJ original tried to put to the Mccanns to get a confession (new DNA testing, perhaps a reconstruction and new interviews with Tapas). They will then bring Mccanns in under caution with PJ/SY present, and say that they beleive they have enough evidience and the PJ have agreed they will charge and go to trial, but offer the McCanns a deal of some sort to come clean, no jail time in Portugal or a short term in UK jail (just Kate?), all other evidience against them will remain under locks forever if they confess. The Mcanns are bought to task, justice served, no expensive trials and the sordid details of the British Doctors is cleaned under the carpet with fresh coat of white for everyone...??. just a theory, i wont argue for or against it being an awful theory....its based on GA comments regarding finding a solution both countries will be happy with.