Tel: 01279 635789
66 Chippingfield
e-mail: ajsbennett@btinternet.com HARLOW
Essex
CM17
0DH
Friday 29 April 2016
Rt Hon David Cameron MP
Prime Minster
10 Downing Street
LONDON
SW1A 2AA
BY HAND
Dear Mr Cameron
re: Petition on
the Prime Minister’s website to order the Home Secretary to publish a report on
the Madeleine McCann Enquiry [Operation Grange]
First of all
thank you for continuing the previous practice of allowing people to submit
petitions via the Downing Street Petition site, and also for facilitating my
being able to deliver the petition results in person to you today.
The petition
attracted 3,111 signatures. Its preamble states: “Enquiries by British (and
Portuguese) police forces have cost around £15 million in 8 years. The public
is now entitled to a full report on how that has been spent. The report should
cover the role of the government, the security services & UK police
forces”.
I appreciate that only those petitions that attract 10,000 or more
signatories are entitled to a government reply. I am also aware that the police
do not normally issue reports on their investigations. However, in view of (a) the totally
unprecedented media coverage the Madeleine McCann case has had for the past nine
years, (b) the degree of concern that has regularly been expressed in many
quarters about the way this operation was initially set up, (c) the way it has
since been conducted, (d) the length of time of the operation – 5 years, and
(e) its cost, estimated at around £14
million so far, I trust you will feel able, on this occasion, to respond to the
concerns expressed by many thousands of people - and of course the 3,111 who
have signed the petition.
The highly unusual way the initial review was set up, the reasons for
it, the very unusual remit, and the later setting-up of what amounted to an
active police investigation on foreign soil are all factors that make this
police investigation unprecedented.
Added to that, many of the public have repeatedly expressed why this
particular missing child case has been singled out, why it has taken so long
with no apparent prospect of success, and its £14 million cost. That cost,
moreover, excludes the costs of: (1) the Portuguese Police operation, (2) the
Leicestershire Police investigation, and (3) the controversial private
investigations carried out by the McCanns, their benefactor, Cheshire-based
businessman Brian Kennedy, and the Directors of the Find Madeleine Fund.
I now set out some of the main areas of concern on which, we suggest,
the public is entitled to persuasive and honest answers:
A. The
setting up of the initial Review, 12 May 2011
For two years, the McCanns had been unsuccessfully lobbying two successive
Home Secretaries (Alan Johnson, and then Theresa May) to secure a Review. Then
Kate McCann decided to publish a book on 11 May 2011, which the Sun newspaper began serialising three weeks
beforehand. On 11 May, the Sun published a letter from the McCanns,
direct to yourself, appealing for you to order a Review. The very next day you
did order a Review.
Subsequently it emerged from credible sources ‘close to No. 10’, and
widely publicised on the BBC and other news networks, that you had been
badgered into setting up the Review by Rebekah Brooks, the Chief Executive
Officer of News International, which owns the Sun. There were credible reports that she had threatened you with
‘a week of bad headlines about Theresa May’ if you did not accede to her request.
These issues were publicly aired by Lord Leveson at the lengthy public
enquiry held into press regulation.
Rebekah Brooks was asked a direct question by Lord Leveson as to whether she
had ‘threatened’ the Prime Minister in order for the McCanns to secure the
Review they had been seeking. She said ‘No’. Lord Leveson then asked her ‘What
word would you use, then?’ She smiled, winked and said ‘Persuaded’. It is clear
therefore that, whatever words were spoken to you by Rebekah Brooks, she persuaded
you to completely reverse decisions made by successive Home Secretaries over
the past two years who, in their political and professional judgment, did not
agree that there was a persuasive case for a review.
Any report to the public should investigate what Rebekah Brooks did say
to you that caused you to order this Review.
Further, it was announced on the very same day (12 May) that the Home
Secretary had agreed to establish a Review and had appointed Sir Paul
Stephenson, then head of the Metropolitan Police (Met), to set it up. It is
unlikely that all of that was done during the 24 hours between the Sun publishing the McCanns’ letter and
your announcement of a Review. Any public report should explain how and when
your decision was arrived at and whether, in fact, the McCanns’ letter in the Sun was a pre-planned move to enable you
to announce the Review the following day.
B. The
appointment of Detective Superintendent (DCS) Hamish Campbell as the Senior
Investigating Officer (SIO) and the person who would decide the remit of the
Review
A decision was taken, presumably by the then Head of the Met, Sir Paul
Stephenson, to appoint DCS Hamish Campbell as the SIO in the case. He decided
the remit of any review or investigation, which has proved controversial.
As any internet search reveals, DCS Campbell is best known for his
actions in the case of the prosecution of an innocent man, Barry
George/Bulsara, for the cold-blooded murder of TV presenter, Jill Dando, a
murder that remains unsolved to this
day. He was the Investigating Officer. On evidence which he helped to assemble,
Barry George/Bulsara was wrongly convicted of Jill Dando’s murder and served
eight years in jail for a crime he did not commit. At the subsequent Court of
Appeal hearing which led to the release of George/Bulsara, the judges suggested
that there were strong indications that a trace of firearms residue which
matched the known murder weapon of Jill Dando may have been deliberately
planted in George/Bulsara’s coat pocket.
Another question which should be fully explained in any public report
about Operation Grange is why an officer with such a poor record of criminal
investigation and judgment should have been entrusted with this sensitive, high
profile and complex investigation.
C. The
conduct of Operation Grange: the chief suspects
There is widespread bafflement as to the conduct of Operation Grange.
One crucial aspect is their identification of the chief suspect
allegedly responsible for abducting Madeleine McCann.
Until a BBC Crimewatch McCann Special transmitted on 14 October 2013,
the chief suspect had been a man carrying a child said to have been seen by the
McCanns’ ‘Tapas 7’ friend, Jane Tanner, at exactly 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May,
about 45 minutes before Madeleine was reported missing. As Gerry McCann had
given evidence that he had checked on his child between 9.05pm and 9.10pm that
evening, it was assumed that this abductor must have snatched Madeleine
immediately after Gerry McCann left the apartment to return to the Tapas
restaurant.
Surprisingly, however, the McCann Team did not release an artist’s
sketch of the man that Jane Tanner said she had seen until nearly six months
later. This unidentified man remained the chief suspect when Operation Grange
began their work in May 2011 and he continued to be featured on the Met Police
and the McCanns’ websites for a further two-and-a-half years. This was despite
the clear findings of the Portuguese Police enquiry that no reliance could be
placed on Jane Tanner’s evidence.
DCI Redwood on the Crimewatch programme in October 2013 claimed to have
‘found’ this man, but gave a highly improbable account of how he came forward
and what he had been doing that night. DCI Redwood, Operation Grange’s
Investigating Officer, told the 6.7-million Crimewatch audience that the Met
now thought this man had been taking his daughter home from a night crèche at
the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz.
There were several unlikely features of DCI Redwood’s account, namely:
1.
The man had waited for
well over six years before approaching the police to say he now thought he
might, after all, have been the man seen by Jane Tanner that night
2.
He had been walking past
the McCanns’ apartment at exactly the same time as the man Jane Tanner said she
had seen a man
3.
He was said by DCI Redwood
to have been wearing clothes that week ‘uncannily similar’ to those described
by Jane Tanner
4.
He was also carrying a
young girl
5.
He was also said to have
been carrying her in exactly the same way as described by Jane Tanner.
The viewing public were asked to believe that this man had only just
come forward after six years and that, co-incidentally, he had no buggy with in
which to carry the child, her mother was not with him, and he had no blanket or
other covering to cover the child on a cold and windy night in Portugal – the
temperature being only 13C at the time. In addition to all these improbable
coincidences, if the man had indeed been walking in the same direction as the
man seen by Jane Tanner, a map showed that he had clearly followed a
mysteriously circuitous route from the night crèche to have been walking in
that place in that direction.
The strange production of this man by DCI Redwood, six years and five
months after Madeleine was reported missing, raised many questions and needs a
full explanation.
If that was bizarre, then just as bizarre was the new chief suspect
unveiled by DCI Redwood on the same programme, namely a man said to have been
seen by several members of an Irish family at around 10.00pm on Thursday 3 May
2007, the very time that the McCanns were raising the alarm.
During the programme, DCI Redwood said that this man was ‘the centre of
our focus’ – the new chief suspect. He also unveiled two quite
different-looking e-fits and told the Crimewatch audience: ‘This is the man we
are now looking for’.
It was obvious to those who have a working knowledge of the case that
there were major problems about the reliability of both the alleged ‘sighting’
and the accompanying e-fits.
Here is a summary of the main issues about the alleged ‘sighting’ and
the two different e-fits:
(1) No member of the Irish family contacted the
police about their claimed sighting until 13 days later
(2) When they did so, it was the day after news
came in that Robert Murat had been arrested. The father of the family had met
Mr Murat on a number of previous occasions
(3) The family have given at least four
contradictory reasons for why they delayed reporting their sighting
(4) The descriptions they gave of the person they
said they saw matched in almost every respect the description given by the
McCanns’ friend, Jane Tanner. Thus all three descriptions – Jane Tanner’s, the
Irish family’s, and that of the ‘man from the crèche’ given out by DCI Redwood
on the Crimewatch programme - are of an identical-looking man.
As the Met Police have now claimed that this sighting
was that of a man carrying his children home from the night crèche, whose description
matched that of Jane Tanner, this then raises the question of whether the
10.00pm sighting by the Irish family was either (A) of the ‘man from the crèche’,
still carrying his child home (unlikely in the extreme) or (B) of another man
altogether – but who looked very much like him, and also carrying a young
blonde girl in pyjamas with no covering on her to protect her from the cold
(5) When interviewed on 26 May 2007 in Portugal,
all three members of the Irish family said that they would ‘never be able to
recognise him if we saw him again’
(6) The e-fits that were shown on the BBC
Crimewatch programme were produced by Henri Exton, the former Head of Covert
Intelligence at MI5. He had been employed by the McCanns’ leading private
investigator at the time. Kevin Halligen. Later, between 2009 and 2013, Halligen
spent over four years in jail for committing a major, £1 million-plus fraud. No
date has been given for when he drew up these e-fits, but from public
statements made by the McCanns, it appear that he and Exton were employed for
around four months between April and August 2008. It is reasonable to assume therefore
that these e-fist were drawn up during those four months
(7) The claim that members of the Irish family were
able to draw up not one, but two e-fits – of faces that looked quite different
- 11 months or longer after their original sighting of him, seems unlikely in
the extreme. All three Smiths who gave evidence in person to the Portuguese
Police admitted that
a)
they had only managed to
see the man for a few seconds at the very most
b)
it was dark at the time
c)
the street lighting, in
their own words, was ‘weak’, and
d)
they were unable to get a
clear view of his face because his face was ‘turned down’ and allegedly partly
hidden by the child he was carrying
(8) As can be seen, the two e-fits produced on
Crimewatch by the Met Police look like quite different men. There is a big
difference in the overall shape of the face, the size of the chin, length of
the nose, hairstyle and so on. It is unusual, to say the very last, for any
police force to produce two separate and quite different-looking images of a suspect
that they really want to find
(9) In addition to all the above reasons for
questioning this claimed ‘sighting’, as a result of an article in the Sunday Times on 27 October 2013, we are
now much better informed about the history of these e-fits. The Met Police said
nothing about their history on BBC Crimewatch, despite knowing fine well what
their history was.
But following the Sunday Times article, we now know:
a)
the e-fits were drawn up
between April and August 2008
b)
they were shown to the
McCanns by Henri Exton some time during this period
c)
the McCanns are on record
as stating that they showed these e-fits to both the Portuguese Police and the
Leicestershire Police ‘by’ October 2009. They have not been willing to give the
actual dates they were disclosed to each police force
d)
according to the McCanns,
neither police force considered that it was worth informing the public about
these e-fits
e)
soon after Operation
Grange was set up in May 2011, the McCanns showed these e-fits to Operation
Grange
f)
Operation Grange did not
act to show these e-fits to the public until the BBC Crimewatch programme of 14
October 2013.
Thus it was a minimum of 5 years and 2 months, possibly up to 5 years
and 6 months, before these e-fits were shown to the public.
These very strange issues concerning the ‘sightings’ of three men all
allegedly fitting the same description - and the precise circumstances of the
history of the e-fits - cry out for the police to explain their conduct.
D. The
conduct of Operation Grange: the BBC Crimewatch programme of 14 October 2013
I have already made reference to the Crimewatch programme.
The BBC admitted that it spent over 6 months and £1 million on the preparations
for the programme. The Met Police must
have spent a similar amount. It received huge promotion by the BBC and the
mainstream press, such that audience figures suggest it was watched by 6.7
million people - a Crimewatch record.
During the
programme, a purported reconstruction of the events of 3 May was shown to
viewers. However, it was not faithful to the reported events of that evening. A
host of material facts about that day that were made public in August 2008 when
the Portuguese Police released full details of their investigation
on a DVD. But nay of them were omitted from the Met/BBC reconstruction. This
is highly unusual because normally a Crimewatch programne will disclose all leading
material facts. For example, contradictory accounts of events and changes of story
by some of the main witnesses were not featured in the programme. Thus the
viewers did not get a balanced picture of events that day. That has led to concerns
expressed by many that the programme was much more about public perception than
about seeking relevant information from viewers - the normal purpose of Crimewatch.
That impression
was underlined by the fact that the two e-fits were shown to a British audience
but not to any audience in Portugal, where the actual alleged sighting happened.
There must also be a major question mark about whether two different e-fits of
a man allegedly seen six years and five months before the programme was transmitted
were ever likely to bring in any new information. The Met Police’s response to
a Freedom of Information question I submitted at the end of last year revealed
that, two years further on, this ‘mystery man’ had still not been identified.
And of course forensic enquiries conducted in the McCanns’ apartment revealed
no forensic traces of any abductor.
E. The
conduct of Operation Grange: reliance on the unreliable evidence provided by
the McCanns’ own investigation team
Early on in the life of Operation Grange, the Investigating Officer, DCI
Andy Redwood, claimed that a major advantage of his investigation was that it
‘brought together’ evidence from three separate investigations, or ‘strands’:
those of the Portuguese Police, Leicestershire Police, and the McCanns’ own
investigation team.
This raised a major issue of what reliance could be placed on any
‘evidence’ from the McCanns’ own investigation team, given that all the
following facts have emerged during the past nine years:
1)
The initial detective team
they appointed, Barcelona-based Metodo 3, was highly controversial, with a
chequered history including its directors having been arrested in a major
telephone tapping scandal
2)
Its Director, Francisco
Marco, issued a stream of lies during December 2007, claiming, inter alia,
that:
a)
They knew Madeleine was
alive
b)
They knew where she was
being held
c)
They were closing in on the
kidnappers, and
d)
Madeleine would be ‘home
for Christmas’.
Despite these very blatant untruths, the
Directors of the Find Madeleine Fund continued to employ them for many months,
according to some reports up to March 2009.
3)
In February 2008, one of
Metodo 3’s top investigators on the Madeleine McCann investigation was remanded
in custody - and spent four years in prison - on serious charges of theft of
cocaine and corruption charges (before being employed by the McCann, he had
been a Detective Inspector on the Catalonia Regional Drugs Squad. He had been
close to a 27-strong gang of career criminals and drugs dealers who were
described by the judge hearing the case as ‘exceptionally violent’.
4)
Furthermore, in 2012, several
staff of Metodo 3 who worked for the McCanns were arrested and charged with
illegal telephone tapping, charges which they admitted.
5)
Moreover, in 2014, two
former Metodo 3 investigators, Julian Peribanez and Antonio Tamarit, wrote a
book; ‘La Cortina de Humo’ - The
Smokescreen - which demonstrated how Metodo 3’s boss, Francisco Marco, who
headed the McCann Team’s private investigations in 2007 and in 2008, had
comprehensively lied about the numbers of people he had on his investigation
team, and what they were really employed to do.
I have attached a translation of the relevant chapter for your
information.
6)
Kevin Halligen, employed
as the lead McCann Team investigator from April to late August 2008, was also
remanded in custody on fraud charges in October 2009 and spent four years in
jail, having been found guilty of a £1 million fraud. According to a lengthy
and well-researched article by Mark Hollingsworth in the Evening Standard in August 2009, Halligen did little or no
practical work of value in the hunt for Madeleine but instead squandered most
of the £560,000 he was paid by the McCann Team on ‘living the high life’ in
luxury hotels in the U.S., Italy and the U.K. with his then girlfriend, Shirin
Trachiotis. After being on the run, wanted for fraud, he was eventually located
in the £700-a-night Bank Hotel, Oxford, where he and his girlfriend were holed
up.
7)
The McCann Team, later, in
2009, employed two former British detectives, ex DI Dave Edgar and ex DetSgt
Arthur Cowley, as their lead investigators. In August that year, Dave Edgar and
the McCanns’ PR spokesman fronted a major press conference where they announced
that:
a)
a British banker, who had
been drinking for several hours in the bars around the port of Barcelona, had
‘agonised’ for two years but had now come forward with information that, three
nights after Madeleine had been reported missing, he had been approached on
Barcelona dockside at 2.00am by a young woman who said: “Have you got my new
daughter?”
b)
the young woman was said
to ‘look like Victoria Beckham’ and have an Australian accident
c)
Madeleine may have been
brought by boat from Praia da Luz, Portugal,
to Barcelona between 3 and 6 May 2007, and that
d)
Madeleine may have been
with the woman on a large yacht that had sailed to Australia the next day.
This press conference received huge coverage in the British TV and print
media.
However, a lengthy report by Tom Worden, Martin Delgado and Andrew
Chapman in the Mail on Sunday on 15
August 2009 drew attention to multiple problems with the entire basis of story,
which was much-hyped in the British mainstream media. Here are some extracts
from the Mail’s report, which was
headed:
"Why did Madeleine McCann detectives ask so few questions?":
“Private detectives leading the hunt for Madeleine McCann faced questions last night after a Mail on Sunday investigation revealed apparent shortcomings in chasing a 'strong lead'. The detectives failed to make even rudimentary inquiries before announcing a 'significant’ development in the worldwide search for the six-year-old.’
“At a Press conference in London, lead investigator David Edgar appealed for help in finding a 'bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike'…Mr Edgar, 52, told the 50 journalists from several countries: ‘It's a strong lead. Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by this point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant’.
“The Mail on Sunday, however, has established that members of Mr Edgar's team who had visited Barcelona:
"Why did Madeleine McCann detectives ask so few questions?":
“Private detectives leading the hunt for Madeleine McCann faced questions last night after a Mail on Sunday investigation revealed apparent shortcomings in chasing a 'strong lead'. The detectives failed to make even rudimentary inquiries before announcing a 'significant’ development in the worldwide search for the six-year-old.’
“At a Press conference in London, lead investigator David Edgar appealed for help in finding a 'bit of a Victoria Beckham lookalike'…Mr Edgar, 52, told the 50 journalists from several countries: ‘It's a strong lead. Madeleine could have been in Barcelona by this point. The fact the conversation took place near the marina could be significant’.
“The Mail on Sunday, however, has established that members of Mr Edgar's team who had visited Barcelona:
·
Failed to speak to anyone working at
the seafood restaurant near where the agitated woman was seen at 2am.
·
Failed to ask the port authority about
movement of boats around the time Madeleine disappeared.
·
Failed to ask if the mystery woman had
been filmed on CCTV.
·
Knew nothing about the arrival of an
Australian luxury yacht just after Madeleine vanished until told by British
journalists, who gave them the captain's mobile phone number.
·
Failed to interview anyone at a nearby
dockside bar where, according to Mr Edgar, the mystery woman was later seen
drinking.
·
Failed to ask British diplomats in
Spain for advice before or during the visit.
“Also, Spanish police could not confirm that they had been contacted by the British investigators. Last night Mr Edgar said: 'We are not above criticism and I take responsibility for any shortcomings. If somebody has not done what they should have done, that's my job to deal with that’.”
“The Mail on Sunday's inquiry by a Spanish-speaking reporter in Barcelona last week has exposed worrying gaps in the British detectives' strategy, including failure to question several people who might have vital information. Barcelona port director Joan Guitart said: 'Nobody has been here asking questions about Madeleine or this Australian woman. This is the first I have heard about any possible link to the port’. A source at the British Embassy in Madrid said: 'The detectives did not inform us or the consulate in Barcelona that they were coming to Spain, nor request any assistance in their investigation’. A Barcelona-based private detective with more than 20 years' experience of missing persons cases said: 'I cannot understand why the Madeleine detectives would have released this story and e-fit to the public without first making their own investigation in the port. It beggars belief that they did not even speak to the owner of the restaurant or the port authorities’.”
Understandably, there were many who suggested that this story had been manufactured simply in order to provide another opportunity for another set of headlines about Madeleine and was never a realistic lead. It raised stil more legitimate questions about the activities of the McCann Team’s private investigators.
F. The
conduct of Operation Grange: contradictory statements and actions about what happened
to Madeleine
Operation Grange’s conduct of this case has been marked by a number of
both obtuse and baffling statements and actions about what has happened to
Madeleine.
Early on, in a TV interview in 2012, DCI Redwood offered the comment
that “Madeleine may be alive…or she may be dead”.
In 2014, Operation Grange mounted a huge operation to search either two
or three (both were stated) waste ground sites in Praia da Luz. The search was
deliberately conducted in the full glare of publicity, with camera teams from
many countries covering the search. There were British police officers with
pickaxes, augers and forensic bags combing the ground, whilst a phalanx of
Portuguese Police officers looked on and guarded the site. It was clear that -
despite the Portuguese Police having thoroughly searched these sites many years
ago – Operation Grange were looking for forensic evidence of a dead body.
In addition, Operation Grange officers searched the village from a
Portuguese military helicopter, a top-of-the-range Mark III Alouette. The
Portuguese Police issued a statement that the British police would have to meet
the costs of hiring the helicopter, guarding the site, and also the expense of
acting as ‘Rogatory Interviewers’ and translators of interviews with no fewer
than 11 suspects who were summoned for interviews under caution in 2014.
Soon after these events, DCI Redwood was quoted as saying that
‘Madeleine may have been dead before she left the apartment’. This obtuse and
baffling statement could have meant a number of things, but most people assumed
that DCI Redwood was inferring that the abductor murdered Madeleine in the
apartment, carried her out, and hid her body somewhere.
Redwood had already committed himself on BBC Crimewatch to saying that a
man seen by the Irish family was (and still is) his chief suspect. Thus, taking all his statements together, it
became clear that his hypothesis was that a man had killed and removed
Madeleine from her apartment and was still carrying her dead body through the
streets of Praia da Luz about half a mile away, several minutes later, heading
towards the beach.
However, despite all the above, the new Senior Investigating Officer in
the case, Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie, called a hasty press
conference on Monday 18 April this year in which he was reported, in all the
following day’s mainstream newspapers (Tuesday 19 April) as saying that
Operation Grange was now pursing ‘reasonable lines of enquiry’ which suggested
that Madeleine ‘may still be alive’.
It was only later that day that the reason for this sudden proclamation
that Madeleine may be alive became clear. On the morning of that very day, it
became public that Dr Goncalo Amaral, the original investigation co-ordinator
in the case, had succeeded in obtaining a unanimous verdict of three Portuguese
Court of Appeal judges who upheld his appeal and over-turned a lower court
verdict that his book, ‘The Truth About A Lie’, was libellous. The Appeal Court
ruled that it was not libellous and said that under Article 8 of the European
Convention on Human Rights – ‘Freedom of Expression’ – he was perfectly
entitled to publish his conclusions on the case. The Court also ruled that the
McCanns would have to pay the entire costs of their seven-year legal fight
against Dr Amaral, amounting to an estimated £500,000.
The question arises as to whether the Met Police press conference last
Monday (18 April) helped in any way to further the Met Police’s investigation.
Manifestly it did not. The only reasonable inference to be drawn by the Met
Police’s conduct is that the press conference was arranged, once again, to
influence public perception, and to counteract what they knew in advance would
be adverse publicity the following day when the Portuguese Court of Appeal
verdict in the case of McCanns v Amaral became known.
G. The
conduct of Operation Grange – A procession of statements and leaks about very
unlikely suspects
Entirely contrary to normal police practice, Scotland Yard have repeatedly
made statements about improbable suspects. In addition, there were ‘leaks’ of
even more improbable suspects, which news media claimed were sourced from
Scotland Yard but never denied. Just to list some of these illustrate the
extraordinary procession of unlikely suspects:
·
‘We have 38
persons of interest, 12 of whom are British’
·
‘A burglar in the
McCanns’ apartment who was disturbed when Madeleine woke up – a burglary gone
wrong’
·
‘A tractor-driver
from the Cape Verde Islands who is now
dead’
·
‘A man from the
Ocean Club who had a spare set of keys’
·
‘A man who smelt
of rubbish bins who was trying to access the apartments of British
families’
·
‘Six British men
seen driving a white van’
·
‘It may have been
one of 650 registered sex offenders whose records we are checking’
·
‘We will be
interviewing 11 suspects under caution and asking them 254 prepared written
questions, including ‘Did you kill Madeleine McCann?’
Quite apart from this plethora of unlikely
suspects, in some cases the identifying of possible suspects in this highly
irregular fashion could have altered any person responsible for Madeleine’s
disappearance and caused him/her to ‘go to ground’. That is irresponsible
police conduct and once again cries out for a rational explanation.
H. The
conduct of Operation Grange: The visit of Alison Saunders, now the Director of
Prosecutions, to Portugal in 2013
On 21 June 2013, the Guardian (along with other newspapers)
reported that:
“Alison
Saunders, the Senior Crown Prosecutor for London, and her colleague Jenny
Hopkins, Head of the Complex Casework Unit, discussed new leads in the inquiry
with their Portuguese counterparts…
“The Met began
a review into the case - funded by the Home Office - after Madeleine's parents,
Kate and Gerry McCann, appealed to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, for help.
The Portuguese investigation was closed in 2008 and there have been repeated
discussions between the British and Portuguese authorities with a view to
reopening the inquiry. So far the Portuguese have refused to do so, saying
concrete new evidence would be required…”
It is far from
clear what the high profile visit of these two top CPS officers achieved, if
anything. There has been no prosecution of anybody. Any report on Operation Grange should be able to explain in
clear terms what was the purpose of sending these two high-ranking CPS officers
to Portugal.
I.
The
conduct of Operation Grange: The obsessive re-publication of endless statistics
One of the
features of Operation Grange over the past five years has been the repetitive
procession of statistics about the amount of work they have carried out. The
latest such occasion was in October 2015 when they announced the following
statistics:
·
The inquiry took
1,338 statements
·
The inquiry
collected 1,027 exhibits
·
Officers
investigated more than 60 persons of interest.
·
A total of 650
sex offenders were considered
·
Reports of 8,685
potential sightings of Madeleine around the world were followed up
·
7,154 actions
were raised
·
560 lines of
inquiry were identified, and
·
More than 30
requests were made to countries across the world asking for work to be
undertaken on behalf of the Met.
In addition to the above list, Operation Grange has also
informed us previously that they:
·
Searched the
mobile ’phone records of over 11,000 mobile ’phone users across 30 countries
·
Travelled to
Portugal over 30 times
·
Interviewed 11
named suspects under caution, and
·
Served several
‘Rogatory Requests’ on the Portuguese Police.
On the face of it, that looks like a very comprehensive and thorough piece
of work. Yet, so far as can be ascertained, all of this prodigious level of
activity has not brought us one jot nearer finding out what really happened to
Madeleine McCann.
According to the files released in July 2008 by the Portuguese Police, there
was no forensic trace of an abductor having been in the McCanns’ apartment. A
finger-print was found on the window of the apartment, but it was that of Kate
McCann. No-one heard or saw the abduction taking place. The person thought to
have been the abductor turns out, so DCI Redwood told 6.7 million people on
Crimewatch, to have been a man using the night creche on the night Madeleine
was reported missing, who hadn’t bothered for six years to tell any police
force that he might have been the person seen by Jane Tanner.
The only other evidence of Madeleine being abducted, apart from the
McCanns’ evidence, is that of the controversial alleged sighting by an Irish
family at 10.00pm that night. The Met Police admitted in answer to a Freedom of
Information request in 2015 - eight years after this alleged sighting - that
they had still not identified this man.
The question arises as to whether the massive amount of money, time and
effort (5 years and around £14 million to date) was in the remotest degree proportional
to the vast amount of effort expended. Any Home Office report should inform the
public on what basis the Review and then the formal Investigation was ever
thought to have a reasonable prospect of success in finding out what happened
to Madeleine.
Nine years on, do we know who took her? - No. Do we know where she has been
taken? – No. So what exactly, in real terms, has been achieved by Operation
Grange? Can we please be told? The taxpayer has funded this.
J.
The
conduct of Operation Grange – Other matters
Certain other
matters ought to be covered in any report for the public on Operation Grange.
One is the
frequently-made claim that the Operation Grange team were working ‘in close
collaboration’ with their opposite numbers in Portugal. This has been flatly
contradicted in many well-sourced newspaper reports in the U.K. and Portugal.
One of these spoke of ‘open warfare’ between the two police forces. There has
never been an tangible evidence of any ongoing Portuguese Police investigation
after the case was shelved in July 2008. All the indications are that the
British presence in Portugal was barely tolerated, at best, by the relevant
Portuguese authorities.
The team’s
justification for, reportedly, staying at some of Portugal’s top 5-star and
4-star hotels is another matter on which many members of the public require an
explanation.
In addition,
the Met Police allowed frequent press reports to appear promising ‘imminent
arrests’. These were not denied by Operation Grange. Yet there have never been
any arrests. Why did the Met allow these excitable stories to be published
without any correction? – as it appears they were all untrue.
K. Questions about the involvement of the
British government and the security services in the Madeleine McCann case
The petition
preamble asked that any Home Office report “should cover the role of the government, the
security services & UK police forces”.
Many people have, understandably, questioned the
enormous scale of government and security service involvement in this case. A
convincing answer has not yet been forthcoming. Amongst the unusual amount of
such involvement have been the following issues:
·
Which government and other agencies formed part of the secret government
task group convened under the leadership of
Matt Baggott, then Chief Constable of Leicestershire Police force, on 8
May 2007, just five days after Madeleine was reported missing. A Freedom of
Information request seeking information about which agencies and persons were
represented on that committee was refused. Why was that? What is so secretive
about the identities of those persons employed at the taxpayer’s expense to
help find out what really happened to Madeleine McCanns?
·
Why was an unusually high level of ambassadorial and consular assistance
given to the McCanns from the very first day, wholly disproportionate to that
given in any other similar ‘missing child’ case?
·
Why, within days of Madeleine being reported missing, did the then Prime
Minister, Tony Blair, send the Director of his 40-strong Media Monitoring Unit
at the Central Office of Information, to act as a full-time Public Relations
Office for the McCanns, a role he is still required to perform today?
·
Why was Special Branch involved, e.g. to convey the McCanns to their home
after they returned to England having just been declared formal suspects in the
case? Kate McCann wrote on page 259 of her book, ‘madeleine’: 0“A Special
Branch Officer drove us to Rothley”. What was the full extent of Special
Branch’s involvement, and why was it necessary?
·
There are several references in the case to MI5 being involved in the case.
Again, why were they involved, and to what extent?
·
In particular, MI5 staff confronted one potentially very significant witness
in the case, namely Mr Martin Grime, the top British sniffer dog handler, whose
two dogs, Eddie and Keela, alerted to ‘cadaver scent contaminant’, blood and
body fluids in 17 locations associated with the McCanns in Praia da Luz. On his
return from his mission with his dogs in Portugal in August 2007, Martin Grime
reported to Dr Amaral, the investigation co-ordinator, that on his return to
England, he had been stopped and questioned by two MI5 officers at Faro
Airport. Credible sources since then suggest that Martin Grime was prevailed on by the two MI5
officers to ‘tone down’ his evidence when submitting his final report. [I note
here that the McCanns (a) deny that the dogs alerted to cadaver scent
contaminant, body fluids and blood, (b) maintain that without corroborative
forensic evidence Mr Grime’s report cannot be used as evidence in a court of
law, and (c) note that the DNA evidence, whilst revealing that the blood and
body fluids could have come from Madeleine, did not amount to proof that
they did].
·
The three ‘private detectives’ who worked for the McCanns under the
umbrella of ‘Oakley International’ in 2008 – Kevin Halligen, Henri Exton and
Tim Craig-Harvey – all had significant and recent experience working closely
with the government and/or the security services. Halligen, who was jailed for
four years from 2009 to 2013, had worked closely with the Ministry of Defence
on lithium batteries. Henri Exton had been the former Head of Covert
Intelligence for MI5. Tim Craig-Harvey also had connections with the security
services. Was the government, and the secret committee set up under the
chairmanship of the Chief Constable of Leicestershire, Matt Baggott, on 8 May
2007, aware of or involved in their appointment?
·
The government is closely linked to the risk and security assessment
company, Control Risks Group, which was dispatched to Praia da Luz in the days
immediately following Madeleine being reported missing. Was the government
involved in sending Control Risks Group and, whether they were or not, did the
government help to fund the involvement of Control Risks Group?
·
Gerry McCann spoke of several personal calls he made to the then Chancellor
of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Later, Gordon Brown was reported to have leaned
heavily on the Portuguese Police to release a description of a man allegedly
seen by the McCanns’ friend, Jane Tanner, at 9.15pm pm on 3 May 2007 (whom
Operation Grange has subsequently identified as an innocent man whose child was
at the night creche that evening). Gordon Brown, as Prime Minster from June
2007, subsequently personally discussed the Madeleine McCann case with
Portuguese President Jose Socrates (now on remand in custody facing serious
corruption charges) on at least two occasions. There was also evidence that Gordon
Brown was regularly in touch with the Portuguese government demanding the
sacking of the Madeleine McCann investigation co-ordinator, Goncalo Amaral, and
was told beforehand that, on 2 October 2007, he would indeed be removed from
his post. Any report should fully explain the great extent of his personal
involvement in this matter.
Many people want answers to these and other
questions.
Colleagues and I have in the past have called, and
still do, for a full public enquiry to be held, with the power to summon
witnesses, into all aspects of the investigations into the disappearance of
Madeleine McCann. Nevertheless, this petition confines itself to a need for a
report to the public on the performance of Operation Grange and related
matters.
I and the other 3,110 people who have signed the
petition trust that you will be able to order the Home Office to prepare a full
report on the work of Operation Grange and the involvement of the government,
the security services and various British police forces, over a period of
nearly nine years, during which time there has apparently been little or no
progress towards understanding what really happened to her.
Yours sincerely
Anthony Bennett
Enclosure:
APPENDIX: ‘THE SMOKESCREEN’ by Julian Peribanez and Antonio Tamarit
(August 2014, ISBN 978-84-941649-8-9) - CHAPTER 13: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF
‘LOS CAGOTS’: OUR WORK FOR METODO 3 - Translation
commissioned by the Madeleine Foundation, February 2016
ADDENDUM TO LETTER
Tel:
01279 635789
66 Chippingfield
e-mail:
ajsbennett@btinternet.com HARLOW
Essex
CM17 0DH
Friday 29 April 2016 (2nd letter)
Rt
Hon David Cameron MP
Prime
Minster
10
Downing Street
LONDON
SW1A 2AA
BY
HAND
Dear
Mr Cameron
re: Petition
on the Prime Minister’s website to order the Home Secretary to publish a report
on the Madeleine McCann Enquiry [Operation Grange] - ADDENDUM
I am submitting this Addendum to my letter in view of the extraordinary and
ridiculous statements made, apparently on the record, by Operation Grange
officers about what they think really happened to Madeleine McCann.
I will first set out the claims made by Operation Grange officers in three
newspapers this week, the Star, the Sun and the Daily Mail.
The Star
·
Maddie McCann
'snatched in botched break-in' Cops sure they know what happened to girl
·
Brit police are convinced they know what happened to
Madeleine McCann – and believe they spoke to her attacker
·
That theory is that the tot was snatched after disturbing
burglars who had been targeting the Portuguese holiday block where she was
staying
·
Police believe three suspects they have been pursuing hold
the key to the nine-year mystery
·
The trio have already been declared arguidos – or suspects
– and were interviewed at least twice.
·
This remaining lead is thought
to be key
·
They are linked by a series of
phone calls they made to each other near the McCanns’ apartment around the time
she vanished
·
The suspects are Jose Carlos
da Silva, 30, who used to drive guests to their apartments at the Ocean Club
resort in Praia da Luz from where Madeleine vanished, drifter Ricardo
Rodrigues, 24, and drug addict Paulo Ribeiro, 53.
Sun
and Daily Mail
·
Madeleine McCann 'was kidnapped during a botched burglary by a gang of
thieves who British police have already quizzed' but are blocked from
questioning again
·
Madeleine McCann was snatched by a group of thieves, it has been claimed
·
Police believe she disturbed them as they robbed her holiday apartment
·
This is thought to be the final line of inquiry being considered by the
Met
·
Madeleine McCann was kidnapped by a group of thieves
because she woke up while they robbed her family's holiday apartment, it has
been claimed
·
It is believed to
centre on a group of thieves which included a 16-year-old teenager and a man
who worked at the Mark Warner resort in Portugal when she disappeared in 2007.
·
Phone calls raise
questions about the group's actions on the night of the three-year-old's
disappearance
·
It's claimed they
have been identified as suspects by British police, but officers are being
blocked from accessing them by Portuguese cops who say no new evidence has been
brought forward
·
An officer told
the paper: 'It has dogged the investigation all the way through
and it's happening again. If we can't question the three suspects again the
trail goes cold and the case will be shelved'
·
When they were
previously interviewed, the men admitted theft from apartments at the complex
but denied any involvement in the youngster's disappearance.
In my first
letter to you, in Section G, I referred to one of the criticisms of Operation
Grange being its ‘procession of unlikely suspects’ which had been paraded by Operation Grange at regular
intervals in the British press.
One only has
to give very brief thought to this latest bizarre claim by Operation Grange to
see the extreme improbability of their claims. These are some of the most
obvious problems with their tale:
(1) Why
would a team of three burglars raid that particular apartment, with the McCann
and their friends regularly checking it?
(2) Why
did no-one else see or hear this team of burglars raiding the apartment and
carrying away a child who – if she woke up and ‘disturbed’ the burglars – was
presumably awake, struggling and probably screaming?
(3) Does
Scotland Yard have any forensic evidence whatsoever from the McCanns’ apartment
linking any of these three men to their alleged presence in that apartment that
night? – No forensic evidence of an intruder has ever been found
(4) Did
these alleged burglars actually steal anything from the apartment? The McCanns
said nothing was missing from their apartment apart from Madeleine
(5) Why
on earth would any burglar, raiding an apartment which was in the dark, carry
away a three-year-old child who woke up, instead of just making haste and
making off?
(6) Does
the description of any of the three men match the man who was DCI Andy
Redwood’s chief suspect – and ‘the centre of our focus’ - on the BBC Crimewatch
McCann Special transmitted on 14 October 2013?
(7) What
other evidence is there of the alleged activity of these three men on the night
in question, apart from their making ’phone calls to each other?
(8) Is
it seriously claimed by Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, other senior officers of the
Met, and the entire Operation Grange team, that the Portuguese Police have been
furnished by Operation Grange with overwhelming evidence of the guilt of these
three Portuguese men’s guilt, and yet have failed to bring charges against them? Is it not far, far more likely that the
Portuguese Police can see this for what it really is - an utterly pathetic
bogus claim and boast by Scotland Yard that they have ‘found’ those responsible
for Madeleine’s disappearance - and are seeking, as they have done throughout,
to blame the Portuguese authorities
for the failure to identify the person or persons really responsible.
You are the
proud Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland. Can you honestly be associated with, and satisfied with, this outcome
of an investigation which you personally set up, at Rebekah Brooks’ request,
and has taken five years and cost around £14 million – to end up with this
farcical claim by Operation Grange?
Yours
sincerely
Anthony
Bennett
