Libel Trial 25 Feb

sharonl wrote:

Bellisa wrote:Can any portuguese speakers confirm if this is a listing of upcoming cases?
It is currently only showing cases for this week as far as I can make out.

http://www.stj.pt/tabelasessoes

That certainly looks like the correct site and under the last tab Funcionalidaes is a automatic translation programme.  It seems though, we only have cases up to 5 days in advance which means waiting until the 20th

Maybe a long shot. But would a Court Official be willing to indicate when the trial is likely to recommence?

Contacts of the Supreme Court
Reference	Phone	Fax	E-mail
Overall (official and / or legal transactions)	21 321 89 00	21 347 49 19	correio@lisboa.stj.pt

Click here to search Google News for news articles from Portugal in the past week which contain the word "McCann".

Well I'm planning my evening's viewing for the 25th already. No doubt I can look forward to another Crimewatch update updating us all on precisely nothing, followed by some kind of documentary on how we can tell the McCanns are modern saints and perfect parents through the 'science' of body language.

canada12 wrote:What's the betting if the court finds against the McCanns, the UK tabloids will either be stonily silent, or filled with outraged headlines about "bumbling Portuguese courts"....

They'll appeal or launch another action on another basis.

ultimaThule wrote:

nglfi wrote:Here's a possible bogus headline to distract - forget Tractorman. Forget Smithman. What about - the abominable snowman! Aka sasquatch aka bigfoot. Can't believe nobody on this forum has thought of it yet! It makes perfect sense. The abominable snowman, camping out in the hills around Praia da Luz, was lured down by a cacophony of drunken revelry from the tapas 7.  On his way down, he came across Maddie, and well, why not? It's more likely than aliens, just?

       There's not enough snow in them thar hills for bigfoot to survive the Algarve's boiling hot summers. 

Could it be that the Pied Piper came to town and Madeleine, the only unattended child awake to hear his enchanting tune, climbed out of the bedroom window, and went dancing off after him to the wild hills around Luz where she's been giving her tuppence worth to a motley collection of gypsies, tramps, thieves, tractormen, spotty men, white van drivers, burglars, ex-MW employees, Victoria Beckham look-alikes, and whoever and whatever TM dredge up to distract attention from resumption of the libel trial, ever since?

Actually, the Pied Pier is a much better explanation, hadn't thought of that! He certainly has more of a motive!

Okeydokey wrote:

canada12 wrote:What's the betting if the court finds against the McCanns, the UK tabloids will either be stonily silent, or filled with outraged headlines about "bumbling Portuguese courts"....

They'll appeal or launch another action on another basis.

They certainly don't, and won't ever, 'appeal' to me!

scrants wrote:Just read on Twitter that the libel trial is due to resume and end on 25 February.  Rumours are rife that delay was due to Mccanns wanting to settle with GA but he refused.

=============================

jeanmonroe on Fri 31 Jan 2014, 4:01 pm
.
McCanns 'scrabbling' around to find enough 'dosh' to pay GA's 'damages'?

£1.2 MILLION?

Might have been in one of the suitcases the Met 'elites' had with them in Portugal.

Would explain why they needed to send FOUR 'maddie cops' to deliver just a 1 page letter requesting HELP about 3 ex-workers at OC from the "sardine munching, lazy, bumbling, bungling, imbecillic, PJ"!

But sent away, after just 3 hours, with 'a flea in their ear'?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow! I'm a Prophet, i just don't know it!
   

Maybe all the money the McCanns 'raise' from their next 1,000 marathons will have to go towards paying GA's 'damages'!  

He is ONE.

nglfi wrote:
Actually, the Pied Piper is a much better explanation, hadn't thought of that! He certainly has more of a motive!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_JsBU8o-ok

Maybe all the money the McCanns 'raise' from their next 1,000 marathons will have to go towards paying GA's 'damages'!
---------------------------------------------------
Stick 'em on a treadmill for life. She can have her pink trainers and cuddle cat and that's it. I insist GM runs with that Wider Agenda whiteboard round his ruddy neck.

The wee one running in a treadmill with his whiteboard round his neck?  I'm liking that idea, but will the whiteboard cover his neck beard, Mirage?    

Do you plan on designing special running garb for them, such as black sweaty polyester lycra onesies with a tasteful motif of yellow arrows for him and pink arrows for her, or will he be running in one of his handmade suits with flashy lining while she wears a number from Monsoon or Gap?  

ultimaThule wrote:
Could it be that the Pied Piper came to town and Madeleine, the only unattended child awake to hear his enchanting tune, climbed out of the bedroom window, and went dancing off after him to the wild hills around Luz where she's been giving her tuppence worth to a motley collection of gypsies, tramps, thieves, tractormen, spotty men, white van drivers, burglars, ex-MW employees, Victoria Beckham look-alikes, and whoever and whatever TM dredge up to distract attention from resumption of the libel trial, ever since?

Hmm.  Actually I'm hearing talk that SY have issued an ILR to interview a Mr Rumple Stiltskin - who matches the efit descriptions (one of them), and has a previous conviction for taking a first-born child (as payment for helping parents turn straw into gold).  



Apparently the bumbling PJ didn't even question him on the night - despite his magical ability to be anywhere at any time...  Luckily SY are not so stupid and have him as prime suspect.

I see that the parents of the author of the piece given above are friends of the owner of the apartment.

For the owner of the apartment I suspect it is now difficult, through no fault of their own, to get the income they were hoping to from their property investment.

I would imagine the preferred outcome for the owner of apartment 5a in this sorry saga would be the abduction by a stranger rather than death in the apartment by whatever means.

Although the leaning of the article is not necessarily biased, the comments which follow certainly are.

Interesting.

In the northern summer of 2005 I took my holidays at the Ocean Club, staying in the apartment directly above 5A where the McCanns resided in May 2007. A friend of my parents owned the apartment,


The apartment directly above was the apartment of Mrs Fenn?

Note that Pedro Silva is commenting (and showing himself up) - his description of GA is actually a description of the McCanns - its called transference.

Regarding the flat above - yes it did belong to Mrs. Fenn, but perhaps she didn`t own it in 2005.

NickE wrote:23 February 2014, 3.40am GMT
The mediatisation of Madeleine McCann


EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga

It is nearly seven years since a little blonde-haired British girl named Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bedroom in a holiday resort in Portugal. Madeleine, if she is alive, would be ten years old now, having spent the majority of her decade on earth separated from her family, parents Gerry and Kate McCann, and twin siblings Sean and Amelia.
What happened that night in the Algarve fishing village of Praia de Luz remains a mystery. Was Madeleine abducted while she slept, by a person or persons unknown, as her parents claim? Or, as the former head of the Portuguese investigating team alleges, did she die in apartment 5A of the Ocean Club complex, her body disposed of in an attempt to cover up negligence or worse?
Ongoing investigations by police teams in the United Kingdom and Portugal have failed to answer those questions, or to find evidence sufficiently compelling as to justify prosecutions in either country.
The case continues to be a focus of public, police and political attention as the seventh anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance approaches, and the trial of that same former investigator accused of libel by the McCanns comes to its conclusion in Lisbon on Tuesday. Ex-inspector Goncalo Amaral’s book, The Truth Of The Lie, based on police work before the case was ‘archived’ due to lack of evidence, advances the theory of Madeleine’s death – accidental or intentional - and hypothesises a staged abduction by the parents.
For this he is being sued for over one million euros in damages by the McCanns, who allege that his book derailed the search for their daughter when it was published in 2009. The closing statements and judge’s verdict on the case are due this week in Lisbon.
My interest in this sad story is both personal and professional. In the northern summer of 2005 I took my holidays at the Ocean Club, staying in the apartment directly above 5A where the McCanns resided in May 2007. A friend of my parents owned the apartment, and my extended family rented it and two other units in the complex for two weeks in July that year: my parents in one, my sister and her family in another, myself, my wife and my brother in the apartment above 5a.

The beach at Praia. Brian McNair

Two weeks is enough time to get to know the Ocean Club resort, and the surrounding village of Praia de Luz, quite well. I ate in the Tapas restaurant, drank in Kelly’s bar, went inside the beautiful church at the village centre; I walked on the beach, and the streets leading to it from the Ocean Club. So when the news of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance broke on May 4 2007 it resonated and captured my attention like no other crime story I can remember.
Millions of people all over the world were similarly captivated, but my sense of proximity to the events gave me a specially good reason to follow the case. The fact that Gerry McCann was Glaswegian like me was another point of connection.
From my professional perspective as a media sociologist, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was an early example of the dramatic impact of the rise of the internet and 24-hour news channels on how human tragedies of this kind are reported and understood by the public.
The mediatisation of ‘Maddie’, as she became known to many, was unprecedented. It involved professional public relations practitioners, including former senior UK government specialists, in highly organized media management, or ‘crisis communication’, as one of the agencies involved characterised its services.
It engaged the British public in discussion like no previous case, not because the crime was unique (though it was rare – the most recent case of suspected abduction by a stranger of a British child while on holiday overseas had been that of Ben Needham in 1991), but because the emergence of social media – Twitter launched in 2007, Facebook in 2004 - provided a new and powerful platform for public sharing of information, opinion and argument about an ongoing criminal investigation.
From early in the investigation the McCanns proactively used the internet to issue appeals and information about Madeleine to a global online public, as did the police. Scotland yard’s Operation Grange, set up to investigate the crime in 2011, had its own hashtag and website.
The public used the internet to access, assess and discuss information about the case as it emerged, and to speculate on what had happened to the little girl. Their sources included a mass of official material produced by the police in both Portugal and the UK, digitized and made available online.

The church at Praia. Brian McNair
Click to enlarge


There were thousands of pages of transcripts of interviews and court testimony, detailed forensic reports, summaries of findings by investigating officers, court rulings such as that by the Portuguese Attorney General which formally ‘archived’ the Madeleine McCann investigation in 2009, all neatly categorized and searchable on sites such as www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk.
Never before in the history of the volatile relationship between crime, media and public had so many people had such easy access to so much primary official data relating to an unsolved, still active case.
By 2007 virtually all of the news media were online, operating around the clock with story updates, live feeds and real time coverage of events, commentary threads and links to research materials. The unfolding narrative of Madeleine McCann was covered as it was happening, which meant with glacial slowness, punctuated by bursts of police activity in the UK or Portugal. Seven years on, that remains the case.
There have been peaks and troughs in the level of media and public interest, corresponding to newsworthy developments such as the establishment of Operation Grange and the BBC Crimewatch ‘reconstruction’ of October 2013. The Lisbon libel trial of Goncalo Amaral has been such a catalyst, and its conclusion this week will drive the disappearance of Madeleine McCann back up the UK and Portuguese media and public agendas.
The tone and content of the coverage, and the public’s response to it on social media, will be determined in large part by the Portuguese judge’s verdict. If Amaral is found guilty, the McCanns account of what happened to their daughter will continue to set the news agenda. If it goes the other way, and Amaral is found not guilty of defaming the McCanns in his book, we can expect the world’s media to report his hypothesis and the supporting evidence more thoroughly than has been the case up until now.

only posted because the original article got website address wrong.

it's www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk

NickE wrote:23 February 2014, 3.40am GMT
The mediatisation of Madeleine McCann


EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga

It is nearly seven years since a little blonde-haired British girl named Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bedroom in a holiday resort in Portugal. Madeleine, if she is alive, would be ten years old now, having spent the majority of her decade on earth separated from her family, parents Gerry and Kate McCann, and twin siblings Sean and Amelia.
What happened that night in the Algarve fishing village of Praia de Luz remains a mystery. Was Madeleine abducted while she slept, by a person or persons unknown, as her parents claim? Or, as the former head of the Portuguese investigating team alleges, did she die in apartment 5A of the Ocean Club complex, her body disposed of in an attempt to cover up negligence or worse?
Ongoing investigations by police teams in the United Kingdom and Portugal have failed to answer those questions, or to find evidence sufficiently compelling as to justify prosecutions in either country.
The case continues to be a focus of public, police and political attention as the seventh anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance approaches, and the trial of that same former investigator accused of libel by the McCanns comes to its conclusion in Lisbon on Tuesday. Ex-inspector Goncalo Amaral’s book, The Truth Of The Lie, based on police work before the case was ‘archived’ due to lack of evidence, advances the theory of Madeleine’s death – accidental or intentional - and hypothesises a staged abduction by the parents.
For this he is being sued for over one million euros in damages by the McCanns, who allege that his book derailed the search for their daughter when it was published in 2009. The closing statements and judge’s verdict on the case are due this week in Lisbon.
My interest in this sad story is both personal and professional. In the northern summer of 2005 I took my holidays at the Ocean Club, staying in the apartment directly above 5A where the McCanns resided in May 2007. A friend of my parents owned the apartment, and my extended family rented it and two other units in the complex for two weeks in July that year: my parents in one, my sister and her family in another, myself, my wife and my brother in the apartment above 5a.

The beach at Praia. Brian McNair

Two weeks is enough time to get to know the Ocean Club resort, and the surrounding village of Praia de Luz, quite well. I ate in the Tapas restaurant, drank in Kelly’s bar, went inside the beautiful church at the village centre; I walked on the beach, and the streets leading to it from the Ocean Club. So when the news of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance broke on May 4 2007 it resonated and captured my attention like no other crime story I can remember.
Millions of people all over the world were similarly captivated, but my sense of proximity to the events gave me a specially good reason to follow the case. The fact that Gerry McCann was Glaswegian like me was another point of connection.
From my professional perspective as a media sociologist, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was an early example of the dramatic impact of the rise of the internet and 24-hour news channels on how human tragedies of this kind are reported and understood by the public.
The mediatisation of ‘Maddie’, as she became known to many, was unprecedented. It involved professional public relations practitioners, including former senior UK government specialists, in highly organized media management, or ‘crisis communication’, as one of the agencies involved characterised its services.
It engaged the British public in discussion like no previous case, not because the crime was unique (though it was rare – the most recent case of suspected abduction by a stranger of a British child while on holiday overseas had been that of Ben Needham in 1991), but because the emergence of social media – Twitter launched in 2007, Facebook in 2004 - provided a new and powerful platform for public sharing of information, opinion and argument about an ongoing criminal investigation.
From early in the investigation the McCanns proactively used the internet to issue appeals and information about Madeleine to a global online public, as did the police. Scotland yard’s Operation Grange, set up to investigate the crime in 2011, had its own hashtag and website.
The public used the internet to access, assess and discuss information about the case as it emerged, and to speculate on what had happened to the little girl. Their sources included a mass of official material produced by the police in both Portugal and the UK, digitized and made available online.

The church at Praia. Brian McNair
Click to enlarge


There were thousands of pages of transcripts of interviews and court testimony, detailed forensic reports, summaries of findings by investigating officers, court rulings such as that by the Portuguese Attorney General which formally ‘archived’ the Madeleine McCann investigation in 2009, all neatly categorized and searchable on sites such as www.mcannpjfiles.co.uk.
Never before in the history of the volatile relationship between crime, media and public had so many people had such easy access to so much primary official data relating to an unsolved, still active case.
By 2007 virtually all of the news media were online, operating around the clock with story updates, live feeds and real time coverage of events, commentary threads and links to research materials. The unfolding narrative of Madeleine McCann was covered as it was happening, which meant with glacial slowness, punctuated by bursts of police activity in the UK or Portugal. Seven years on, that remains the case.
There have been peaks and troughs in the level of media and public interest, corresponding to newsworthy developments such as the establishment of Operation Grange and the BBC Crimewatch ‘reconstruction’ of October 2013. The Lisbon libel trial of Goncalo Amaral has been such a catalyst, and its conclusion this week will drive the disappearance of Madeleine McCann back up the UK and Portuguese media and public agendas.
The tone and content of the coverage, and the public’s response to it on social media, will be determined in large part by the Portuguese judge’s verdict. If Amaral is found guilty, the McCanns account of what happened to their daughter will continue to set the news agenda. If it goes the other way, and Amaral is found not guilty of defaming the McCanns in his book, we can expect the world’s media to report his hypothesis and the supporting evidence more thoroughly than has been the case up until now.

Absolutely brilliant! I have left a few comments myself, in response to the usual loons!   

Woofer wrote:Note that Pedro Silva is commenting (and showing himself up) - his description of GA is actually a description of the McCanns - its called transference.

Regarding the flat above - yes it did belong to Mrs. Fenn, but perhaps she didn`t own it in 2005.

According to her statement she lived in the apartment from 2003:

Being of British nationality and in spite of living in Portugal, does not have knowledge of the Portuguese language in its oral and written form, therefore a police interpreter is present, UEVE VAN LOOCK. Thus, according to the facts noted in the files, she says that she has lived in the apartment since 2003, which is located on the upper floor, immediately above the room from which the child disappeared.

She also refers to the day of the 1st May 2007, when she was at home alone, at approximately 22.30 she heard a child cry, and that due the tone of the crying seemed to be a young child and not a baby of two years of age or younger. Apart from the crying that continued for approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, and which got louder and more expressive, the child shouted ?Daddy, Daddy?, the witness had no doubt that the noise came from the floor below. At about 23.45, an hour and fifteen minutes after the crying began, she heard the parents arrive, she did not see them, but she heard the patio doors open, she was quite worried as the crying had gone on for more than an hour and had gradually got worse.
http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/PAMELA_FENN.htm

Thats quite a formidable CV, no wonder the loons seized on it.

Pamela Fenn's PJ interview is very interesting, and worth posting here, again, in its entirety:

Mrs Pamela Fenn 20 August 2007
Mrs Fenns statement, taken in Praia da Luz on the 20th of August 2007:

Included in the files as a witness statement.

Being of British nationality and in spite of living in Portugal, does not have knowledge of the Portuguese language in its oral and written form, therefore a police interpreter is present, UEVE VAN LOOCK. Thus, according to the facts noted in the files, she says that she has lived in the apartment since 2003, which is located on the upper floor, immediately above the room from which the child disappeared.

She also refers to the day of the 1st May 2007, when she was at home alone, at approximately 22.30 she heard a child cry, and that due the tone of the crying seemed to be a young child and not a baby of two years of age or younger. Apart from the crying that continued for approximately one hour and fifteen minutes, and which got louder and more expressive, the child shouted ?Daddy, Daddy?, the witness had no doubt that the noise came from the floor below. At about 23.45, an hour and fifteen minutes after the crying began, she heard the parents arrive, she did not see them, but she heard the patio doors open, she was quite worried as the crying had gone on for more than an hour and had gradually got worse.

When questioned, she said that she did not know the cause of the crying, perhaps a nightmare or another destabilising factor.
As soon as the parents entered the child stopped crying.
That night she contacted a friend called EDNA GLYN, who also lives in Praia da Luz, after 23.00, telling her about the situation, who was not surprised at the childs crying.
She did not have anything to report for the 2nd May, because she was only home at night.
On the 3rd May she received a visit from her niece Carole during the morning, who said that when she was on her terrace she saw a male individual looking into the McCanns apartment, situation which has been told to the police, her family member even made a photo fit"
During the day nothing unusual happened, until almost 22.30 when, being alone again, she heard the hysterical shouts from a female person, calling out ?we have let her down? which she repeated several times, quite upset. Mrs Fenn then saw that it was the mother of little Madeleine who was shouting furiously. Upon leaning over the terrace, after having seen the mother, Mrs Fenn asked the father, Gerry, what was happening to which he replied that a small girl had been abducted. When asked, she replied that she did not leave her apartment, just spoke to Gerry from her balcony, which had a view over the terrace of the floor below. She found it strange that Gerry when said that a girl had been abducted, he did not mention that it was his daughter and that he did not mention any other scenarios. At that moment she offered Gerry help, saying that he could use her phone to contact the authorities, to which he replied that this had already been done. It was just after 22.30.
She said that after the mothers shouts, she had seen many people in the streets looking for the girl. She also refers to an episode when Gerry was speaking to a policeman and he refused to recognised the police force, saying that more agents of authority were needed to carry out the search.
When asked, she replied that on 3rd May she did not hear any noise from the McCann apartment, not even the opening of doors. She also said that before hearing the shouts she was watching television, as she often stays up late.

When questioned, she said that she never heard any arguments between the couple or with their children. She said that the family would spend much time outside of the apartment and therefore she did not notice their presence.
She said that until that night she had never spoken to the McCann's, because up until the 3rd May, she only sometimes saw them walking in the street. She never saw them with any vehicle.
She also said that she never told the McCann's that she had heard their daughter crying previously on 1st May because she thought it would just increase their suffering.

When questioned she said that she never saw any strange person or action before or after the event. She claims however, that a week previously she was the victim of an attempted robbery, which was not successful and neither was anything taken, thinking that the crying of the child could be linked to another attempted robbery in the residence.

tasprin wrote:

Woofer wrote:Note that Pedro Silva is commenting (and showing himself up) - his description of GA is actually a description of the McCanns - its called transference.

Regarding the flat above - yes it did belong to Mrs. Fenn, but perhaps she didn`t own it in 2005.

According to her statement she lived in the apartment from 2003:

 Thus, according to the facts noted in the files, she says that she has lived in the apartment since 2003, which is located on the upper floor, immediately above the room from which the child disappeared.

Thanks tasprin - so the fellow who wrote the piece must be lying - interesting !

There are more than 2 storeys in the block, though, so when stating the apartment above 5a, he could be referring to the flat above Mrs Fenn's, or even the one above that. Or perhaps Mrs Fenn is the the friend of the parents?

Seems a strange claim to make if false as most familiar with the case would immediately spot the discrepancy, thus undermining his entire - very good - article very easily.

Dee Coy wrote:There are more than 2 storeys in the block, though, so when stating the apartment above 5a, he could be referring to the flat above Mrs Fenn's, or even the one above that. Or perhaps Mrs Fenn is the the friend of the parents?

Seems a strange claim to make if false as most familiar with the case would immediately spot the discrepancy, thus undermining his entire - very good - article very easily.

I suppose it is remotely possible that Mrs Fenn moved out for certain periods of the year and let her apartment out which as we know was in a prime location. Many people do that, they either go and visit relatives or stay with friends, it makes a good income. Not saying she did this of course.

Good old Pedro! Keeping us all straight!
 
Then there’s comments to the article from:
 
James Clarke, Teacher:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsP9EVG4XHY&feature=youtu.be     (@1.07)
 
‘where  you can hear DCI Redwood say that McCann parents are no longer suspects or persons of interest and neither are their friends. An edit of your article and inclusion of this fact would be appreciated’.
 
Really!  It must be my ears then! Wonder if he teaches Pedro English. Comments and differing views are one thing, but requesting an edit and inclusion of a (non) fact is something else.
 
This is what Redwood actually says:
 
‘neither her parents or any of the (other?) member(s?) of the group who were with her are either persons of interest or suspects’
 
This is a stated position at a particular moment of time. Completely different in my book and certainly not ‘no longer suspects’.
 
It gets increasingly difficult but I still live in hope.

Dee Coy wrote:There are more than 2 storeys in the block, though, so when stating the apartment above 5a, he could be referring to the flat above Mrs Fenn's, or even the one above that. Or perhaps Mrs Fenn is the the friend of the parents?

Seems a strange claim to make if false as most familiar with the case would immediately spot the discrepancy, thus undermining his entire - very good - article very easily.

For anyone interested in this subject - refer to Textusa's latest post which seems to about this article and reference to the flat above.