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A senior Portuguese police
officer has condemned the parents of Madeleine McCann for
creating a “monster of information” that has failed to help
in finding their daughter.
Carlos Anjos, president of the Association of Criminal
Investigation Staff, said that detectives had advised Kate
and Gerry McCann against their media campaign. They had also
warned the couple against drawing attention to Madeleine's
distinctive right eye, saying that it could have put her
life in greater danger.
The disappearance of Madeleine shortly before her fourth
birthday has become one of Europe's most-reported stories
after the McCanns made a series of international visits to
promote the search for their daughter.
Mr Anjos said that that to “keep pushing stories into the
papers — they have clearly not helped solve the case”.
“Quite honestly I don't know if that is good or bad for an
investigation,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Inside Stories
programme today. “We were against this from the start. And
importantly, we were against the release of Madeleine
McCann's photo all over the world.
“We thought the photos that were released should not show
the distinct mark Maddie had in her left eye. From our
experience in criminal investigations this was a kidnap,
which was what we believed from the start, the revealing of
such a distinct feature would put that person's life in
danger.”
Mr Anjos said that Mr and Mrs McCann, both 39, from Rothley,
Leicestershire, were partly to blame for the hurtful and
damaging news stories that they have complained about. The
couple have been made official suspects in Madeleine's
disappearance from the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz on
May 3,
Mr Anjos said: “There is no criminal investigation which can
feed a news frenzy for six months, so what we have seen are
both English and Portuguese journalists behaving in a
scandalous and unprofessional way.
“Writing terrible stories in the papers, some of which have
clearly affected the McCanns. . . . now we have to say that
the McCanns are partly to blame for this. Because it was
something they created.
“It was the McCanns who first gave the story to the press.
It was them, together with their press advisers — whose
instructions I assume they were following — who gave all
those press conferences. It is our opinion that the McCanns
created a monster of information about the ‘Maddie case'
which they then lost control of.”
His comments followed claims by two Portuguese policemen who
arrive at the Ocean Club on May 3 that senior officers were
to blame for serious errors in the initial stages of the
investigation. The officers from the Guarda Nacional
Republicana (GNR) admitted that a “circus” of people
trampled through Madeleine's bedroom on the night she went
missing.
One officers said: “It was chaos. The world and his dog were
in that room just to look under a bed. It was crazy allowing
so many people to trample through. There was nothing we
could do. The damage had already been done.”
British police experts have said that vital evidence could
have been destroyed or contaminated because of the failure
to seal off the ground-floor flat and the surrounding area.
One of the GNR officers said: “It's not brain surgery and
probably, in this case, could have saved a lot of
speculation, heartache and unnecessary investigation time
and money. The world's eyes are on us and we mucked up big
and there's nothing they can do to change things — it's too
late.”
The officers claimed that Mr and Mrs McCann and their seven
British friends had been difficult to deal with because they
had been drinking.
“They were upset, panicking, wide-eyed, the usual, but there
was something else. They were scared — not the usual scared,
they were jumpy, nervous. It wasn't normal. None of it was
normal,” said on officer.
“They'd all been drinking. They weren't falling over but it
was hard to deal with them.”
The McCann family spokesman, Clarence Mitchell — himself a
target of some of Mr Anjos's remarks — rejected as “utter
nonsense” claims that the campaign had hindered the
investigation. “We have done our absolute best to make
people aware that Madeleine is out there,” he said “possibly
still alive, and we still need their help.
“Everything Kate and Gerry did from the minute she went
missing, they have not regretted, nor have I, nor have any
of the family.”
He criticised some news reports for misleading the public by
repeating “myths” about the case and the hunt for Madeleine,
who disapeared shortly before her fourth birthday.
“The coverage in certain directions has been most
unhelpful.” he said, “ and we feel very disappointed by
certain aspects of this which keep getting repeated and
repeated and repeated until the wider public — who have no
real inside information on this for very good reasons,
because we can't put it out there — they believe these
headlines."
Inside Stories: The positive and negatives of the media
machine can be heard on Radio 4 at 9.30pm tonight or at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/newspapers.shtml
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