Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

Caroline Gammel, WA Today, Australia.

Is there is no end to the despair suffered by Gerry and Kate McCann? Fifteen months after their three-year-old daughter Madeleine disappeared from their holiday apartment at the Ocean Club resort in the Portuguese village of Praia da Luz, she is yet to be found. So often their hopes have been raised only to be cruelly dashed. Their daughter has been “seen” at a petrol station in Morocco, in the Maltese capital, Valetta, at a restaurant in the Belgian town of Tongeren, and in Cartagena in the south of Spain. But despite a lengthy international police inquiry and global publicity, no clues to her possible whereabouts have been uncovered.

Now, newly released secret Portuguese police files have provided information that can only deepen their anguish and increase their frustration at what appears to be a series of missed opportunities and a catalogue of failings in the hunt for their missing daughter.

According to the files, British police were tipped off that Madeleine McCann had been snatched by members of an international pedophile ring who photographed her three days before she vanished. In an email sent by the Metropolitan Police, a child abduction ring based in Belgium placed an order for a “young girl”. Three-year-old Madeleine was spotted by someone connected with the gang who took her picture. The photograph was sent back to Belgium, where the pedophile ring agreed that she should be abducted. Three days later, on May 3 last year, Madeleine was abducted while her parents ate dinner at a restaurant near their apartment.

The revelation supports Kate and Gerry McCann’s long-held theory that their eldest child may have been taken by a child-smuggling ring and follows news earlier this week that a little girl seen in a shop in Amsterdam only days after Madeleine’s disappearance called herself Maddy and and told the Dutch shop assistant, Anna Stam, that “they took me from my holiday”. Stam, 41, later saw a picture of Madeleine and made the link because of her unusual eyes. She reported the sighting to the Dutch police who passed her details to detectives in Portugal, but no further action was taken.

The encounter was reported to the local Policia Judiciaria in June last year but not passed on to the McCanns. Their private investigators are looking into the lead. The email regarding the pedophile ring that was sent by an intelligence officer on the Met’s vice squad on March 4 this year to counterparts in the Portuguese and Leicestershire forces is a significant development in the case. Just last month, Portuguese police closed their investigation and cleared the McCanns, who live in the county of Leicestershire, of involvement in their daughter’s disappearance.

The files showed that Detective Constable John Hughes, from Leicestershire police, forwarded the email to the Policia Judiciaria at Portimao in the Algarve on April 21. The next day it was sent to Ricardo Paiva, one of the three Portuguese police officers leading the investigation.

On April 28, Portuguese police faxed the information to Interpol in Lisbon and asked them to investigate it as a matter of urgency. Interpol replied on May 23, passing on all information gathered from its bureaus in London, Brussels, Germany and Finland. On May 27, Interpol sent an urgent fax to Portuguese police asking for more information, but an undated return fax told them they had all the information that there was. The inquiry was shelved on July 21.

Belgium has already featured in the case. There was an alleged sighting of Madeleine last August in Tongeren but it was later ruled out. The country was at the centre of one of the most notorious pedophile investigations of recent years that saw Marc Dutroux jailed for life in 2004 after being convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering young girls.

The files have also shown that Kate McCann wrote to Portuguese police begging for information about her daughter and calling for an end to hostility over the case. Mrs McCann, 40, contacted the head of the investigation, Paulo Rebelo, while she was still a suspect and said it was “torture” not knowing what was happening. She pleaded with him for a thaw in the frosty relationship between the couple and detectives in the Algarve, and the British police.

Appealing to Rebelo’s “heart” and his role as a father, she said she wanted an end to the infighting. “This shouldn’t be about ‘finger-pointing blame’ nor should it be about differences in culture,” she wrote. “It should be about a beautiful, innocent little girl who is still missing. “As her mother, the pain and anxiety I feel for her is indescribable and the feeling of helplessness overwhelming.”

Rebelo did not reply to the letter and has never met the couple, despite travelling to Britain in April to interview friends who dined with them on the night Madeleine disappeared. The police files have also revealed that the Policia Judiciaria was also criticised by Portugal’s own public prosecutors, who accused detectives of failing to uncover any credible evidence about the three-year-old’s fate.

The extent of the police failings was laid bare in files that showed officers refused to divulge key information to the family and public, including: detailed e-fits that they were given three days after the Madeleine disappeared and were not released until the case closed.

-circuit TV images of a young girl seen at several petrol stations in Portugal shortly after Madeleine vanished. Kate and Gerry McCann were shown just one CCTV picture during the 15-month investigation.

Yesterday the McCann’s spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said the couple had been frustrated beyond words at the lack of co-operation from the Portuguese police.

“The worst thing is that all this time Madeleine has been let down by this lack of apparent co-ordination,” he said.

As the McCann’s Portuguese lawyers continued to trawl through the enormous police files, they said they were considering asking for the case to be re-opened. The search for Madeleine McCann goes on.

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At: http://www.watoday.com.au/world/they-took-me-from-my-holiday-20080808-3rzc.html?page=3 (http://www.watoday.com.au/)

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