Gonçalo Amaral: "Prime ministers are not eternal"
03 May 2009
IOL Portugal Diário
Thanks to Astro for translation
With "some irony" and always defending the theory that Madeleine McCann died on the evening of the 3rd of May 2007, in the apartment in Praia da Luz, where she was spending holidays with her family, Gonçalo Amaral, a former Polícia Judiciária coordinator inspector, states to tvi24.pt that he has doubts whether the appearance of a corpse "would be enough to reopen the case". Despite that, he adds, "prosecutors are not eternal, prime ministers are not eternal either. We live in a democracy and things are going to change".
Two years after Maddie disappeared, the man who led the investigation for six months and ended up being removed from the case, states that, at the moment, "the will that exists is to keep everything silent, without talking much about the subject". Nevertheless, he awaits "someone influent" with the courage to reopen the inquiry. "That person will come and say: 'Let's find out, once and for all, what happened here'," he says, filled with hope.
From the investigation that he led, he draws two lessons. "Political pressure cannot exist within criminal investigations" is the first that he refers. But the second one is so much more personal: "We often say yes, but there's always that one time when we can say no. We can abdicate from our careers and do some good in the search for justice and truth".
"They wanted to fill us with sightings"
Having been removed from the case after controversial statements about his British counterparts, Gonçalo Amaral reaffirms his accusations and goes further: "There was information management done by the English police". "A lot was concealed and they wanted to fill us with sightings", he adds.
He offers two examples. The first denunciation associating suspicious behaviour by one of the members of the group of friends that was on holidays in the Algarve, David Payne, was made on the 16th of May 2007, by a doctor, to the British police. "The information arrived in Portugal in October, after I had already left", he recalls.
But if this information arrived several months later, others were never seen. The former PJ recalls that, with the consent from Portuguese authorities, an appeal was made for tourists to send in photos from the day and the night of Maddie's disappearance. The purpose was "to identify anyone suspicious who might appear looking at the family", he says. But despite "much that arrived at the English police, none of those images ever reached us".
Many diligences left to carry out
When questioned whether he is still investigating the case, Gonçalo Amaral refuses to use the term investigation because "he is dedicated to other things in life". But he admits that he has been "in contact with other people, including retired policemen, both Portuguese and foreign" and that "the entire process is being analysed, in order to understand what was done and what diligences are left to carry out".
Despite the archiving coming as no surprise, he defends that it was rushed and that "there is much left to clarify". Like, for example, "to find out whether or not David Payne, one of the last persons to see Maddie, was with Kate in the apartment and bathed the children". This name is actually a piece of the puzzle that he considers to be "crucial" to clarify "what really happened that day".
Still, he insists: "What happened is in the process. There are indications that the little girl's death happened in that space. Now, it is necessary to reopen the process to find out about the circumstances and the possible involvement of a third party, and to advance in that direction. That was what we were doing when I was removed".
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