Wednesday 10 March 2010

Isabel Duarte: Madeleine's life could be at risk

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Image by Himself of The McCann Gallery

Kate and Gerry McCann have been to Lisbon this week to consult their Portuguese lawyer, Isabel Duarte about the 2,000 page dossier of evidence in their daughter's disappearance, which has been released to the press. They were interviewed by Sandra Felgueiras.





Asked about the files, which contain apparently new sightings, Gerry says, "We've now got them, but as I say errr Kate and I haven't actually gone through them ourselves."

Why not? I'd be tearing those files apart looking for any image that might look like my child.

Kate McCann, asked about sightings, says, "To be honest, we don't get shown a lot of the photographs anyway. I think the police decided that there was so many photographs like that get sent to them and, you know, clips of CCTV that it's...."

I find it hard to trust people who insist on saying, "To be honest." Honest people don't need to keep saying that in my opinion.

Maybe that's partly the reason why the McCanns have not been shown the images in the dossier they now have access to. Or it could be that the sightings were checked out before being labeled "irrelevant," or even because the case is officially archived, awaiting new information. If the McCanns consider that the images of sightings since the case was archived constitute new information, they could ask the Public Prosecutor to reopen the case.

It could, of course, be that most of the sightings are as ridiculous as that of the half-naked Frenchman on a French motorway, waving a gun at a small child and no one appeared to have called in the armed response unit. Or there may be more like the people from Tayside in Scotland, who encountered a Maddie look-a-like at a camp site in France, who pleaded "help me," with her eyes, but they didn't try to help her until they got home and contacted the local police.

"The McCanns' visit to Portugal came after an Algarve court released new files on their daughter's disappearance.

The 2,000 page dossier covers dozens of possible sightings Portuguese detectives appear to have failed to follow up.

The couple, both 41, criticised the disclosure, claiming it jeopardised the search for Maddie."