We stated that the appeal court judgement planted a stick of dynamite under  libel claims against Goncalo Amaral by the McCanns both in Portugal and the UK. That was because, we maintained, the team have based their entire claim on the notorious prosecutor’s archiving report. Not only does that report have fatal weaknesses and contradictions in it but it has  also been deliberately misrepresented by the McCanns and their lawyers. Under legal scrutiny both the misrepresentations and the contradictions have been partially exposed, and the process will continue as the various documents come under further judicial study.

So is there any evidence for those claims of ours and our conclusions? 

The contradictions & the “exoneration”

The details are in a number of our previous posts. Broadly, however, the conclusions of the report cannot be reconciled with the police evidence on which it is based and the claim that it exonerated them cannot be sustained.

The prosecutor states not that they are “exonerated” or “cleared” – only a judicial body such as a court can do that – but that there is “no evidence” of their wrong doing. The report itself makes clear, however, that the McCanns helped ensure that the evidence was incomplete by refusing, along with the Tapas 7, to co-operate in clarifying the events of May 3.

Under those circumstances it is impossible to clear them as the report itself acknowledges by saying that in failing to attend the clarification and reconstruction exercise they lost the chance of exoneration. Come on folks, even supporters of the McCanns – if he says they lost the chance of exoneration (“proving their innocence” in the English translation)  then they can’t have been exonerated (or “proved their innocence”), can they?

In court in Lisbon earlier this year the prosecutor – who cut a dreadfully unconvincing and unreliable figure  - further weakened the exoneration claim by stating that the parents had not checked on all the occasions that they claimed, in other words they had not told the investigators the truth. The more the the archiving report comes before the courts, whether via further appeals or in future libel hearings, the more credibility it will lose, exactly as contradictions in witness testimony are eventually exposed in court.

The claim, by the way, made  by supporters of the McCanns that the parents never actually refused to attend, is based on either ignorance or dishonesty. The parents made it clear in a BBC radio documentary broadcast on April 26 2008 – and made  while the requests for co-operation were still being processed  – that they would not  return to Portugal in the foreseeable future. 

“Interpretations” and misrepresentation

The  McCanns have form when it comes to dishonest misrepresentation, rather than misinterpretation, of the Portuguese legal system for their own purposes. On the day the report was published the McCanns and their advisors helped their chosen feed, the London  Evening Standard, write a scandalously dishonest article about it.

As well as making the first known claim  that the report “cleared” the parents it claimed equally dishonestly that the same report also “mocked” and “lambasted” the Portuguese police force for its inadequate investigation and criticised it for failing to establish proof of what had happened.

According to the story a “source close to the McCanns’ legal team” added that the report established that the police had “blatantly misrepresented” the evidence and that legal action against them was on the agenda. Mr Frightwig himself  confirmed his own story by saying that legal action against the police was  indeed an option.

LONDON EVENING_STANDARD_05_08_08.htm

So the written evidence is there – for use, we hope by Amaral’s lawyers in any future libel trial – that the selective distortion of this important document by the McCanns, their spokesman and “sources close to their legal team” began on Day One and has continued ever since.

But Team McCann had, it seems, descended into a dream world, apparently seduced into the belief by then that spin could accomplish anything: rather than just kidding the British public with their dishonest and lying version of the report, they actually came to believe that the same tactics would work in court – by founding their libel claims on it.

Have a look and see how total their dependence is.

The empty cupboard

This is the letter which Carter-Ruck sent out to the website GerryMcCannsBlogs and which the site owner – thank you Pamalam –  posted up. It contains virtually their entire case. In the second paragraph they state  the parents have denied all the libellous  allegations made in the media and that – here it comes, folks - the Portuguese prosecutor confirmed that there was “no evidence whatsoever” to implicate the McCanns.

Despite this, they say, Goncalo Amaral has made “wholly unsubstantiated” allegations in The Truth of the Lie. “Mr Amaral’s views about our clients have been discredited by the court which found no evidence to support his thesis whatsoever.”

The site is given seven days to respond.

Well even the bluffers at Carter Ruck could see that a claim using the Prosecutor’s support alone was a bit thin. So what else did they come out with to support the claim of libel against Amaral? They couldn’t find a fucking thing. Not a thing. So they invented – yes, Carter Ruck invented – the claim that the original Portuguese gagging injunction against Amaral  was a “Court Order” that Pamalam was breaching!

That was a year ago, October 30 2009. Pamalam called their bluff about the court order but now it doesn’t even apply to Amaral; the claim that the court has “discredited” Amaral’s allegations cannot now be made; and the prosecutor’s report which “confirmed there was no evidence” against the pair has been established as “an interpretation” by three judges.

The McCanns are said to be in consultation with their lawyers. You bet. The dynamite has done its job