OLD NEWSPAPER REPORT........

Seems everything we think was suspected over 2 yrs ago !!!

An old article, but worth reading again 2 years on


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-482007/Lies-beatings-secret-trials-dark-police-handling-Madeleine-case.html#ixzz0UzGpRERF

Lies, beatings, secret trials: the dark side of police handling Madeleine case


By DAVID ROSE
Last updated at 18:57 16 September 2007

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According to his friends, Chief Inspector Goncalo Amaral of the Portuguese Policia Judiciaria, co-leader of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann from the Mark Warner Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, is a dedicated and capable detective, determined to do whatever it takes to find her ? or those responsible for murdering her.
As a foreign reporter in Portugal, it is difficult to form a view. Thanks to the country's stringent judicial secrecy laws, Amaral is officially forbidden from talking to the media.



I confronted the sweaty, corpulent figure in an ill-fitting jacket twice last Friday: the first time at 10am, as he sat slurping coffee and cakes at the Kalahary cafe in Portimao with his colleague, Chief Inspector Guillermino Encarnacao; the second just before 3pm, when the two men made their way from a restaurant to a waiting black Mercedes, in which they were driven 400 yards to meet officials at the courthouse.
The reaction was the same both times: "No speak! No speak!" was all Amaral would say, making a swatting motion as though batting away an insect.
But Amaral's official silence is not the only difference between him and his counterparts in Britain.
In the UK, it is unlikely he would be leading the McCann inquiry at all.
Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry may never be charged with anything, despite their present status as arguidos, or official suspects, and by the end of last week, apparently well-placed sources were admitting that any case against them is circumstantial and weak.

Amaral, however, is in a similar position. He, too, is an arguido, facing possible trial on a serious criminal charge arising from a murder case brought to court in 2004, the last occasion a little girl vanished in the Algarve.
The Mail on Sunday can today reveal new details of this case, the subject of a draconian judicial order that has stopped most sources who know about the case from talking to the Portuguese Press.
According to the order, documents about the case have been restricted to a handful of officials, while the next stage of the process ? a hearing at which Amaral and four fellow officers may be asked formal questions ? will be conducted in secret.
It is believed that this is set for next month.
Three of Amaral's senior PJ colleagues have been made suspects for the torture of the missing girl's mother, Leonor Cipriano, who has been convicted of killing her daughter Joana, aged eight, and jailed for 16 years.
As for Amaral, the claim against him is "omisado de denuncia" ? that he tried to hide the evidence of the alleged torture or, in other words, attempted a cover-up. He is said to deny it strenuously.
Leonor bruised and battered after her 'confession' to Portuguese police. She is now in prison, convicted of Joana's murder
In internet blogs and newspaper columns, Amaral's supporters have claimed that the Cipriano case is built on lies ? a vicious smear against a decent detective trying to do his job.
It has, they say, "no connection" to the Madeleine McCann inquiry.
Experienced lawyers in Portimao, the town 12 miles from Praia da Luz where Amaral is PJ chief, disagree.
The case against the detectives began as a complaint lodged by Cipriano's lawyer, they pointed out, but has now been adopted by the public prosecutor.
"In order to bring formal charges, the public prosecutor has to believe there is a strong case," said Oliveira Trindad, who has practised law in the area for more than ten years.
"That means that after assessing all the evidence, he thinks that if the case goes to trial, a conviction is more likely than not."
That decision is likely to be made well before the McCann case is closed.
Searching questions: Some of the police hunting for Madeleine
There are, to be sure, many differences between Leonor Cipriano and Kate McCann.
But there are also similarities, starting with the fact that although the bodies of their daughters have not been found, Amaral and his PJ colleagues have long been convinced that both girls are dead.
No one would suggest that in the course of the marathon interrogations that preceded their departure from Portugal last weekend, Kate or Gerry McCann were the victims of physical violence.
But at times it seemed they were also being subjected to torment, albeit of a different, psychological kind.
It, too, say Portimao's criminal defence lawyers, may have been inspired by PJ officers desperate to achieve the end they sought with Cipriano ? a confession.
It isn't hard to locate the source of some of the McCanns' current difficulties: Hugo Beaty's bar.
There, amid the burnt orange concrete of the Estrela apartment complex, a five-minute walk from the Ocean Club, most of the seats along the shady terrace and more inside will be taken all day by reporters with laptops, authors of a daily verbal torrent that has come to seem unstoppable.
After Kate and Gerry's abrupt return to Leicestershire last Sunday, almost nothing happened in the McCann case last week.
The only verified fact is that after considering a ten-volume PJ dossier about Madeleine's disappearance on May 3, Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias, a junior judge in Portimao, decided to grant certain requests made by the prosecutor, Joao Cunha de Magalhaes.
Every news outlet covering the story ? a waterfront that now extends across the whole of Europe to the major American TV networks and even, unbelievably, a paper in war-torn Somalia ? has stated that these requests were for warrants to seize items including Kate McCann's private diary, Gerry's computer and (though this seems slightly less certain) Madeleine's beloved cuddle cat.
There is, however, nothing approaching official confirmation of these claims.
Like everything else about the case, the details of the prosecutor's approach to the judge are covered, supposedly, by the judicial secrecy laws, under which the penalty ? in theory ? for making unauthorised disclosures is two years in prison.
Thus it is that like almost everything else being broadcast and published beyond Portugal's borders about the hunt for Madeleine, the claim that the police want to read Kate's diary has reached its audience via Hugo Beaty's bar.
Every day there starts the same way shortly after it opens at 9am, with an informal briefing to the foreign Press by a locally resident British woman who normally makes a meagre living acting as an occasional interpreter ? for the Policia Judiciaria.
Every morning, the woman ? who asked me not to publish her name ? goes through the Portuguese tabloids and translates their ever-more febrile articles.
Every afternoon, the foreigners ? almost none of whom can speak more than the most basic Portuguese, nor claim a single, genuine source inside the police investigation ? recycle the tales for consumers abroad.
By the end of last week, some of the assertions made by the Portuguese had become part of a settled consensus.
For example, it was reported from Berlin to Baltimore that the police had already made a photocopy of Kate's diary ? which, if true, would mean they had broken the law ? and merely wanted to obtain the judge's approval to use it as evidence.
The reason they are so keen on it, it was alleged, is that it suggests she found her children "hyperactive" and difficult to handle, while railing at her husband's allegedly dilatory, hands-off approach.
The claims about the diary's contents were first published on Thursday by Jose Manuel Ribeiro, crime correspondent for the Lisbon daily Diario de Noticias.
By chance I ran into him that same afternoon, outside the apartment where Madeleine disappeared.
I congratulated him on his scoop, but he shook his head, disconsolate. Already, he complained, it was turning to dust.
Ribeiro said he had been given the story by an impeccable inside source, but already officials in Lisbon were denying it, and the source himself could no longer assure him it was true.
"Why is bad information getting out to the public?" he asked. "Because we're being given it."
Somehow, however, the denials that had made Ribeiro so angry did not get through to the foreigners.
If the questionable leak had been planted for a purpose ? to increase the pressure on the hapless McCanns ? it may well have succeeded.
And, in the foreign public's mind, the germinating notion that Kate might have killed her daughter because she could not handle her had been nurtured by a further dollop of manure.
A similar, apparently sanctioned but inaccurate leak had already gone around the world to still more devastating effect.
Early on Monday evening, TV channels began to report that British forensic scientists had made a "100 per cent" DNA match to Madeleine from "biological material" ? said to be hair and "bodily fluids" ? recovered from the Renault Scenic that the McCanns did not hire until 25 days after she vanished, suggesting that they had hidden her body on May 3 and moved it weeks after her death.
With no time for reporters to make checks before their deadlines, the story spread like foot and mouth to almost every British front page the next morning.
It was only in the ensuing days that it began, spectacularly, to unravel.
The match was not 100 per cent after all, it transpired, but 80 per cent or less ? a level that, according to Professor Alec Jeffries, DNA matching's inventor, might mean that the material had not come from Madeleine at all, but another member of her family.
Even if it had, other experts said, it would prove very little.
Among readers who followed the forensic details, the case against the McCanns had been seen to suffer damage.
But others were left with a clear impression ? that the PJ now believed they had real evidence that the McCanns must have been responsible for Madeleine's (still unconfirmed) death.
As for those who still harboured doubts, more rococo "revelations" were being published widely by the end of the week, such as the claim that having bundled Madeleine's body into the car, the McCanns drove it to the marina in nearby Lagos.
There they are said to have hired a boat, swore its owner into their conspiracy, then sailed into the Atlantic, into which they tipped their child, weighted down with rocks.
Could such stories really be part of a conscious PJ strategy? Some lawyers around the Portimao courthouse believe that they could.
"Portuguese journalists aren't just making this stuff up," said Oliveira Trindad.
"They are getting it from the police, of course, and the justice officers, the people working for the prosecutors. It's obvious that some information is coming from the PJ."
Some of it, he added, appears to be accurate ? so making it that much easier for the same sources to seed disinformation.
Another Portimao lawyer, who asked not to be named, claimed the PJ was fighting a "propaganda war" with the McCanns.
"It is the fault of the British Press," he said.
"They were the ones who started saying, 'You're no good, you're no good.'
"If you say a lie like that many times, so many people believe it. You cannot blame the PJ for wanting to hit back."
But there might be another reason.
"Some people think journalists pay their PJ sources," the second lawyer said, citing a case where an officer from Lisbon is facing criminal charges after being caught red-handed copying secret documents about a fraud case, allegedly for private profit.
"But they also have an interest in the case and its coverage."
With the forensic evidence apparently confused and contradictory, "it seems the main goal of the PJ now is to get a confession. It's like in the films, 'Aha, we have a confession, let's take them to court.'
"It's normal to want a confession when they don't have much else."
Intense interrogation of the McCanns has so far failed. But perhaps, the lawyer implied, using the media might be another way of applying the third degree.
"I want to believe that the Portuguese police do everything the right way," said Joao Grade, the lawyer for Leonor Cipriano.
"But sometimes, if they really think someone is guilty, as they did with Leonor, they may find other ways to get what they want. It's only human.
"When they believe someone has killed a child, it's normal that they will apply pressure.
"In the McCann case, it seems that the police have what they consider half-proofs.
"But it's not airtight, it doesn't interlock, so maybe they need more."
As he spoke, I found myself recalling British miscarriages of justice: cases such as the Birmingham Six, wrongly convicted of IRA pub bombings that killed 21, where the police, under tremendous pressure to "get a result", built dishonest but convincing prosecutions based around confessions.
Could the same thing be happening to the McCanns? The pressure on the police is certainly intense.
The loss of a child evokes horror everywhere. On the Algarve, however, the need to solve the case ? and, perhaps, not to leave the fear that Madeleine was killed or abducted by an unknown paedophile ? has other roots as well.
"The Algarve is a family destination, and situations like this are not agreeable to anyone," said Elderico Viegas, the regional tourism authority president.
"Our reputation for safety is one of our most important values ? especially with the British, who make up our biggest market."
And Algarve tourism, worth about £2.8billion a year and growing rapidly, is, Viegas said, the single biggest component of the entire Portuguese economy.
The police had, he added, mishandled the media, giving rise to damaging speculation.
"But for me, the details are not important. What's important is the economy. I was born and brought up here and I can't remember the last time a tourist was murdered." So far, he added, visitor numbers this year are up.
Central to many British miscarriages of justice was a shared, deeply ingrained belief among police and prosecutors that their suspects "had" to be guilty.
With the Birmingham Six, it was founded on botched forensic tests that "told" investigators that the men had been handling the explosive nitroglycerine ? false positives that arose because they had been playing with cards coated in the harmless chemical nitrocellulose.
In Praia da Luz, there are signs of a similar mindset at work, derived from equally tendentious "evidence".
For example, said a local source who knows several of the PJ inquiry team, from an early stage detectives laid great weight on Kate McCann's apparent composure when she appeared in public.
One of the strangest aspects of Portuguese coverage of the case has been frequent recourse to media psychologists, who have made all manner of deductions about her personality and state of mind by "analysing" her TV image, claiming that the absence of tears and presence of carefully applied make-up indicates a "cold", "manipulative" or even "psychopathic" personality.
In other words, someone capable of reacting instantly to the death of her daughter, whether deliberate or accidental, by deciding that she had to hide the body and conceal what had happened, and able to persuade her husband and perhaps other "accomplices" to go along with her plot.
Disturbingly, said the local source, such analysis has not been confined to the media.
"Pretty early on, they had forensic psychologists in, studying hours of video footage, drawing extremely unfavourable conclusions about Kate's personality," she said.
"You could say she's been damned by her stiff upper lip."
There have been reported claims that Kate McCann had "confessed" to killing Madeleine to a local Catholic priest.
But the Rev Hubbard Haynes, the Anglican vicar who lives in Praia da Luz and got closer to the McCanns than anyone during their months in Portugal, refuted them with controlled fury.
A young, passionate Canadian, who took up his post a week after Madeleine's disappearance, he said: "When I mention Maddie, Gerry and Kate in my own prayers, I find myself weeping.
"I have gone out into the fields and looked in the hedgerows, begging God for some sign that will help us find her, and I have wept because He has not given it to us yet.
"All I can say is that my tears are as nothing to the tears I have seen shed by Kate and Gerry.
"They may not have cried for the cameras, but to say they do not weep in private is facile and offensive.
"The man and woman I have known for the past four months are a couple whose lives have become unbearably empty because their little girl was missing.
"I do not recognise those people in recent media reports, and I find the idea that they had anything to do with her disappearance just inconceivable.
"There is great evil in this world, and someone has taken this child."
Other aspects of the emerging mindset against the McCanns seemed equally questionable.
Several Portuguese lawyers and journalists, along with a uniformed police officer from the National Republican Guard I spoke to outside the Ocean Club apartment, told me solemnly not only that the McCanns and their friends were "swingers" who had taken their holiday together to indulge in group sex (an assertion made repeatedly by the Portuguese Press), but that "everyone knows" that its tolerance of orgies is the Mark Warner Ocean Club resort's main selling point.
One afternoon I decided to test this proposition, approaching two holiday reps there, dressed in their red Mark Warner sweatshirts. "Er, is this a good place for swingers, then?" I asked.
They looked at me in total bafflement. "Swingers?" one replied.
"Look around you, sir. Most of our guests are retired, or families with children."
Another assertion published several times last week is that, on the night that Madeleine disappeared, the McCanns phoned Sky TV before contacting the police ? another claim echoed by the uniformed cop.
Outside the Portimao courthouse, I asked Sky's reporter Ashish Joshi if he thought this might be true.
He rolled his eyes wearily. "It's just nonsense," he said.
"The first anyone at Sky knew about Maddy was when the story appeared on the Press Association wire.
"I was asked about this just yesterday by a Portuguese reporter. I told him it was crap. And this morning, his paper printed it."
I passed this on to the Republican Guard officer, but he was unmoved.
His unit, he said, had handled the case in its early stages, and from the start he and his colleagues had been convinced there was something fishy about the McCanns.
"My partner was there on the night of May 3," he said, "and I can tell you, that apartment was full of people, Kate was screaming ? and yet her twins didn't wake up.
"How do you explain that? They must have been drugged. Nobody on the force believed their story about a kidnap for a moment.
"That little girl is dead, for sure. Soon you will see the truth."
Why the need for such bizarre allegations? The answer, I believe, is that there is a massive hole at the heart of the emerging PJ theory.
When Madeleine disappeared the McCanns did not have a car.
The Ocean Club is in the middle of a busy resort, and the notion that somehow the McCanns found a way to conceal her without transport, and then went to dinner with their friends as if nothing were amiss is beyond credibility.
One Portuguese journalist suggested to me that they might have hidden her on a scrubby headland a few minutes' walk away.
But as I found when I attempted to go for a run there, at night it is inhabited by feral dogs, whose barking would have made the digging of some putative shallow grave impossible.
The PJ enjoys a high reputation in Portugal.
"They are ranked among the top five police forces in the world," attorney Trindad said, albeit admitting he did not know the source of this curious international ranking.
Most PJ officers are graduates, and would-be entrants face severe competition, with a battery of psychometric, physical and academic tests before they can even be considered for the PJ training school.
The force's Press office likes to compare the PJ to the American FBI: "We are an elite," spokeswoman Ana Mouro said.
But beneath the veneer, as the case of Leonor Cipriano suggests, the reality can look less impressive.
"She is nothing like Kate McCann," her lawyer Joao Grade said.
"She is very poor, with maybe only three years of schooling, and her children have several fathers.
"She did not get to meet the Pope and she did not have the support of Sky and the BBC.
"But I tell you this: if Kate had been treated like Leonor, she would have done what Leonor did ? ended by saying, 'OK, OK, I'm guilty, and this is how I did it.'"
The special judicial order ? imposed on top of the usual Portuguese secrecy ? means not only that Grade is prevented from disclosing virtually anything about the Cipriano case, but that pre-trial hearings of the charges against the detectives, due as soon as next month, will be held in camera.
The Mail on Sunday has established crucial alleged details from other legal sources in Portimao.
After Joana disappeared in September 2004, Leonor was arrested by the PJ in Portimao on October 14 at 8am.
Held there and in the city of Faro without access to a lawyer, she was interrogated without sleep for 22 hours.
Then, after a two-hour respite, she was interrogated again until 7am on October 16.
By this time, as photos published by the Portuguese media make clear, her face was a mass of bruises.
According to Grade: "Not just her face but her whole body was black and blue."
The police said she "tried to commit suicide" by throwing herself down stairs.
If the alleged torture was to force a confession, it succeeded ? only for Leonor to withdraw it when she finally saw her lawyer the next day.
The supporters of the accused police have claimed that the officers must be innocent because Cipriano could not pick out her alleged attackers in an identity parade.
However, according to the sources in Portimao, this is because they are not alleged to have beaten her themselves, but to have brought in paid thugs.
In any event, she was convicted and sentenced to 21 years.
Last June, this was reduced on appeal to 16 ? though one of the five appeal court judges issued a dissenting opinion, stating that he was convinced she had been assaulted in custody and was innocent.
If the criminal case against the PJ officers does lead to convictions, Grade said, she will appeal again. He has also lodged a case in the European Court of Human Rights.
Strangely enough, Chief Inspector Goncalo Amaral is not the only link between the Cipriano and McCann cases. Another of the senior officers who is now an arguido is the recently retired Chief Inspector Paulo Pereira Cristovao.
He is one of the McCanns' principal scourges ? not as a detective, but in his new capacity as a columnist for Diario de Noticias, among the most active of Portuguese newspapers in its pursuit of stories about Madeleine derived from leaks.
"There is another link between the Cipriano and McCann cases," a Portimao lawyer claimed.
"You know, it's like if Manchester United lose a big game: next week the pressure they have to win is very big.
"The PJ are beginning to worry that now they might lose the Cipriano case.
"If that happens, they have to win with the McCanns."
Of course, there is yet another connection.
If Leonor Cipriano did not kill Joana, the chances of discovering the truth ? or indeed her body ? are now remote.
And as the McCanns have stated repeatedly, if they are innocent, the enormous effort being poured into trying to blame them is effort diverted from the search for a missing four-year-old girl, and the person or persons who abducted her.
That is a thought so grim that it almost makes one wish that the mindset so evident around Praia da Luz had a real foundation.
My fear is that it has as much solidity as the sandcastles on the beach.
• David Rose has been investigating miscarriages of justice for 25 years and has written several books on the subject.

I remember this article when it first came out, and everything Rose has said has been borne out.

I would like to note however, the Amaral's background has not been sufficiently checked and reported on in this article. The things which Rose should have checked (and it is easy to say in hindsight) is Amaral's financial position (bad debts, house repossession etc), his record in the drug squad, why he was moved from the drug squad, any other complaints made against him (probably need a freedom of information request to get this though). Rose should have made a much bigger deal about Amaral's past, and his past record.

And on Grade. I find those comments very strange coming from a man who a year later attends Amaral's 50th birthday party.

I agree on both counts............I wonder why Rose never followed through its obvious he disliked and didn't trust Amaral..

I was thinking about this last night. I suspect that Rose didnt know about the financial shenanigans, or why Amaral was moved from the drug squad (neither do I but I do know that Sofia in one of her letters or interviews said that he was shafted, and after remarkable results on a certain case, in other words treated poorly).

Possibly even if he had an inkling, he may not have been able to substantiate it, and so it is not included in the article. However, if that is the case, i would have expected him to have substantiated in the time since he wrote that first article. So my guess is that he just never knew. After all, why would anyone think someone with such a financial background, and with possible forced transfers in his employment for who knows what, be put in charge of a missing child's case. The mind boggles at such a thing.

Joao Cipriano (Leonor's brother) is apparently addicted to hard drugs and was at the time of Joana's disappearance, his own mother has said that he would do 'anything' to feed his addiction. Really? Anything?

Is he still addicted? If so, how is he feeding his addiction in prison. How easy is it to get drugs in prison? And how are they paid for? These things are worth investigating about Joao, because if his addiction is being fed from outside the prison, it may provide some answers.

Of course it may come to nothing, and he may have beaten his addiction. But the point is, has it been investigated?

Amaral isn't clever but he's ruthless imo. And desperate craving for money and fame.
If he's involved with drug trafficking in the Algarve, he's just a middle man imo. Paid to keep his eyes shut and to get rid of people the higher echelons want to get rid of.

Why didn't they test the pig sty for human remains?

Do pig's eat bones?

Thats the problem in this case..How much and Who was followed /investigated thoroughly !!
I wonder what Mr.Rose's opinion is now. I wish he had the clout to have followed this case through.

Do pig's eat bones?

Yes Cath they do.

eeeow I really didn't know that. Thanks Maria.

Cath wrote:eeeow I really didn't know that. Thanks Maria.

Couldn't they have analysed the pigs poo ?

Catkins wrote:

Cath wrote:eeeow I really didn't know that. Thanks Maria.

Couldn't they have analysed the pigs poo ?

This was a murder inquiry, I assume the pigs were kept for slaughter? As I have already said, why did they not slaughter the pigs and find out for certain?

Even though pigs may eat bone, is it really conceivable that they ate all the bones? I do not believe this, especially the big long bones like the femur. What was the time span they had to eat all of these bones not leaving a trace?

I believe this is just macabre nonsense made up by people intent on framing Leonor Cipriano for a murder she did not commit!

When I said Amaral was "clever" this was just a tongue in cheek remark made because apparently Amaral can do anything he likes WITHOUT getting his hands dirty. (In other words he gets others to do his dirty work for him!)

Pigs will eat ANYTHING, they are gross and disgusting, although yummy once cooked. ;p But they have really powerful teeth and can plow through just about anything. I think they could make relatively short work of all bones...they would only stop when they were hingry..and then probably come back. But I do think even they'd leave some evidence like small shatters of bone, something, behind.

B;uj

You are right. There would be shards of bones in the pigs poo, and in the pen. There would also be traces of DNA from splatters etc.

IMO there would be enough DNA in the pigpen, regardless of it being washed down, more than one would expect to find in the house. And it depends upon what type of pen. If it is a dirt floor pen, then it is highly likely it is not washed down, making it more likely to find DNA. If it is a concrete pen, a modern commercial piggery (which I doubt), then it would be regularly washed down. However, it is likely that some trace of human DNA would still be remaining months after a body was thrown into the pen. I would suggest that there would be traces of hair and teeth that would not be digested, and would still be remaining. And if a concrete pen, look in the drains, or in the cracks in the concrete, in corners etc.

It beggars belief that a theory that a pig ate the body is allowed in court without any evidence whatsoever to back it up.

About this pig eating bones subject, yes it is my pinion too that pig s*it should be thoroughly examined, no way that a tiny little hair or piece of bone wouldn't be there. And I've read/seen somewhere that it was inded sifted by PJ officers (oh dear, how I like this image!them sifting pig s*it!) WITHOUT any positive result. We know how incompetent they are but why not discard this stupid idea that Joana was fed to the pigs? Actually, I think they did, didn't they?

And don't expect the pigstail to be clean, concrete floor or the alike. Earthe floor are s*it removed with a shovel somewhere near. They could also have gone to those deposit sites and investigate, right?

Agree it was yet another Fairytale !!

So the pigsty is earthen floor, which is what I sort of expected. So without a doubt, there would have been remains left there. If the PJ couldnt find any, then it is because Joanna was never there.

I feel sorry for the underlings that had to sift the s**t, if there was any justice, then Amaral and his mate Cristovao would have had to do it themselves.

Diane, it was Claudia and Alsabella, that told us all on the DX, that Leonor murdered her daughter and when I asked how they knew this because no body had been found, in answer to my questions about how all this nonsensical non evidence was allowed in court, they gleefully told me everyone knew Leonor was guilty because she had fed her daughter's body to the pigs. The point that this has never been proved was neither here nor there.

It should not have been the PJ sifting through anything, it should have been a forensic science team and the results should have been declared in court during the trial. There were so many things that were obviously wrong, yet they were allowed to be presented in court as evidence, this is truly shocking, no wonder one of the judges at Leonor's trial insisted on going on record as saying he thought she was innocent.
One thing that stands out and one thing I just cannot get my head around is the 'fact' that, this was another highly controversial case concerning Goncalo Amaral, who said that they found the child's blood in the house and the freezer, yet this blood was *NEVER* cross matched against Joana's blood group or DNA, when Leonor's lawyer who was then Joao Grade, requested that it was cross matched, apparently he was told this could not be done because the samples taken from Joana's home had been destroyed! Er hello, why? Why would the only physical remains of a child who had disappeared in a highly controversial case be discarded? And even if this was so, then where were the paper records of those blood samples? Surely DNA tests were carried out on them and the results recorded? If there is no body in Portugal, there is no trial without a confession and we are sup[posed to believe they discarded Joana's blood samples without making records of the results? And what did Joao grade do about this in court while he was representing Leonor? He should have got the case thrown out on this alone, yet amazingly, the trial continued even though the main witness was tortured, also as Maria tells us, as there is no body then under Portuguese law, Leonor Cipriano should have again confessed to the murder again in court and she did not. It was also the case that the confession was extracted from Leonor Cipriano *WITHOUT* her having her lawyer present and this alone is illegal. It begs the question, just how a conviction was ever gained in this case!

Beggars belief Rosie.............

Rosie

I dont pretend for one minute to know what happened to Joanna. But what I do beleive is that she was not murdered and fed to the pigs. I am not even convinced that she was even murdered because there is NO evidence. She may very well have been murdered, but if she was then it is evident that her murderer is going to get away with it, even if that is Joao. If Leonore was tortured, Leandro was totured, then it stands to reason the Joao was tortured, or coerced or perhaps even bought off. Of course it doesnt mean he didnt harm her, but it does mean that nobody knows if he did or not, and it cant be proven in a court of law.

Shortcuts, perverting the course of justice, or the old 'ends justify the means', all end up with justice failing. And it has for poor little JOanna.

What it all comes down to, is if JOao killed Joanna and disposed of her body, then he must know where that body is, and so it stands to reason that there is something false about his confession, as he has not said where the body is. Leonore also doesnt know where the body is. This alone leads me to question why their confessions were accepted in court, especially considering that as Maria has explained the correct legal process was not followed.

And then there is no forensics, no blood match, no DNA match, problems with the fridge size, and also the blood not typed or matched. But all of this pales into insignificance with the fact that neither of the accused in their confessions was able to direct the PJ to a body. Why, because quite simply they dont know where she is.

dianeh wrote:Rosie

I dont pretend for one minute to know what happened to Joanna. But what I do beleive is that she was not murdered and fed to the pigs. I am not even convinced that she was even murdered because there is NO evidence. She may very well have been murdered, but if she was then it is evident that her murderer is going to get away with it, even if that is Joao. If Leonore was tortured, Leandro was totured, then it stands to reason the Joao was tortured, or coerced or perhaps even bought off. Of course it doesnt mean he didnt harm her, but it does mean that nobody knows if he did or not, and it cant be proven in a court of law.

Shortcuts, perverting the course of justice, or the old 'ends justify the means', all end up with justice failing. And it has for poor little JOanna.

What it all comes down to, is if JOao killed Joanna and disposed of her body, then he must know where that body is, and so it stands to reason that there is something false about his confession, as he has not said where the body is. Leonore also doesnt know where the body is. This alone leads me to question why their confessions were accepted in court, especially considering that as Maria has explained the correct legal process was not followed.

And then there is no forensics, no blood match, no DNA match, problems with the fridge size, and also the blood not typed or matched. But all of this pales into insignificance with the fact that neither of the accused in their confessions was able to direct the PJ to a body. Why, because quite simply they dont know where she is.

Diane, this is exactly what I have been trying to ram home for over two years now! You don't have to be some hotshot legal eagle lawyer or police detective to look at the case of missing child Joana Cipriano and her mother Leonor Cipriano and her Uncle, Leonor's brother, Joao Cipriano and there subsequent trial for the child's murder, to know there has been corruption and a massive cover up in their cases and because of this, poor little Joana has been let down badly.

I believe there has been a huge miscarriage of justice, certainly in the case of Joana's mother, Leonor.

Leonor had a lawyer who registered this case at the European Court for Human Rights, his name was Joao Grade, he appeared to be doing everything he could for Leonor, then strangely his efforts trailed right off and he began to do nothing. Strangely this was *after* he was apparently caught trying to smuggle *DRUGS* (yes the drug link again) into a prison. I have never been able to understand this, he as a lawyer is in and out of the prison environment all of the time, he knew he would definitely be searched for drugs, yet we are asked to believe he took a chance on his liberty and his his whole life and career by smuggling drugs into this prison? Exactly how much sense does that make? Why would an educated and learned man think he could get away with this?

He was next to useless in court representing Leonor. He never tried to expose the fragility of the circumstantial evidence against his client.

After the lawyer was found to have had these hard drugs on him, he stopped trying to represent Leonor Cipriano properly, he let things slide - why?

In retrospect of the rumours now circulating about how Goncalo Amaral conducted his investigations, and how he could make things happened "without dirtying his hands" and taking into consideration how he has been accused of threatening to plant drugs on someone if they did not shut up and leave him alone, it does make me wonder if this man Joao Grade, was threatened, that if he didn't back off, he would go down for smuggling drugs? If this happened of course the man would have probably lost his career, as well as his liberty.
Apparently there was animosity between Goncalo Amaral and Joao Grade, concerning the Leonor Cipriano case. The two men investigating the case of missing Joana Cipriano were of course Goncalo Amaral and Paulo Cristovao, so to discover that Joao Grade was invited to and attended Goncalo Amaral's large expensive birthday bash a couple of weeks ago was a puzzle, but then to also discover that Joao Grade actually had dinner with Paulo Cristovao that evening, well to me, the mire appears to get deeper and deeper.

In the end of course the lawyer, Dr Marcos Arageo Correia, offered to become the lawyer of Leonor Cipriano and was accepted and has had some major successes on behalf of Joana and her mother Leonor. Dr Correia, is an honorable man, who fortunately, does not scare easily.
For his trouble he has had his character assassinated, he has been threatened and physically and mentally abused, he has had what are clearly vexatious and spurious law suits filed against him in the Portuguese courts by Goncalo Amaral.

Dr Marcos Arageo Correia considers himself to be a medium and for this, Goncalo Amaral has accused him of being mentally unstable and has filed suits against him trying to get the courts to have him sectioned and hospitalised in a mental institution. Also, when he done this, Goncalo Amaral, decided to send all the details to all the press in Portugal and they printed very unsavory reports about Dr Correia. Amaral has contiunally waged a campaign against Marcos to blacken his name and character, the latest being a few weeks ago, when a report appeared in Portuguese newspaper the Correo de Manha, that Dr Correia had apparently disrupted the birthday party of Amaral, when in fact he had not, he was sitting in his car in the street, his passengers standing outside by his car smoking their cigarettes and watching the fireworks at Amaral's birthday party, it should be noted that they were in a public street. Suddenly Dr Correia was attacked by men that had come from Amaral's party, the lawyer was apparently pulled through the open car window and verbally abused and threatened.

An official complaint was made to the police and incident numbers issued and people were named in that incident report. It should also be remembered that the Portuguese attorney general has been made aware of a very dangerous situation.

Journalists and editors of the Correo de Manha newspaper that had attended Goncalo Amaral's party, next day wrote a piece that far from resembled the truth and of course, Goncalo Amaral himself actually writes a column for the Correo de Manha!

So whether you believe in matters psychic or not it doesn't matter as it is completely immaterial, the questions here that need asking and answering are evident. Even if you do not believe in spiritual matters, plenty of people do and that is there right in a free world. Many people do not believe in Christianity etc, but they do not try to have people who do believe, sectioned under the mental health act!
If we were to take that to its logical conclusion, then Goncalo Amaral and his wife Sofia Leal-Amaral, are said to be staunch Catholics, then should Dr Marcos Correia apply to have them sectioned under the mental health act for believing life after death too?

The only one here who has been convicted of a crime is in fact the ex policia judiciaria coordinator, disgraced ex Chief Inspector Goncalo Amaral, who has been found guilty in a Portuguese court of law over the torture of none other than Leonor Cipriano, concealing evidence of her torture and lying and also perjury, Amaral is in fact a convicted criminal liar, serving an 18 month suspended prison sentence, for which an appeal has been registered against the leniency of his sentence and also an appeal has been registered against the insane acquittal of the ex PJ officers who stood trial alongside him.
These officers (among them Pierre Paulo Cristovao), were accused of torturing Leonor Cipriano, the fact that torture happened to her while in police custody was proved. the ex PJ officers were acquitted on a technicality, Leonor could not identify her torturers because she had a blue plastic bag placed over her head while she was tortured. The ex PJ officers refused to comment at their trial, so their silence should have been taken as guilt and they should have been warned that this would be the case, instead there were not! They were acquitted!
They were the men present when Leonor Cipriano was tortured, so if they did not torture her then who did? It is rumoured that thugs from outside were brought in to carry out the torture on the woman, if this was the case, then these men have to be complicit in conspiracy to torture, they were present, why did they not stop it? Who brought the thugs in?

This should *NOT* have been a means to acquit these men, it should have been reason to convict them and their sentences made heavier, because if they allowed this torture, they could have stopped it but stood by and did nothing, they stood by and watched a helpless woman beaten and tortured into confessing to something she probably did not do, this makes them more culpable than if they had carried out the torture themselves, it also makes it a premeditated act.

It should not be forgotten here that Goncalo Amaral (again) is also due to stand trial over the torture of Leandro Silva, (Leonor Cipriano's partner).

There is much starting to emerge about the disgraced former chief inspector Goncalo Amaral, it is time now for Portugal to do the right thing. Surely the Portuguese government must realise by now that this along with the Madeleine McCann abduction and subsequent appalling investigation, is NOT going to go away, and it is NEVER going to go away, until something is done about it and this something must be substantial and it must be seen to be done and they simply have to act now.

Goncalo Amaral must be officially questioned, if necessary arrested, made a witness and forced to tell what he knows about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and alos the disappearance of Joana Cipriano, whose body has *NEVER* been found!

*Two abducted girls, within 2 and half years and 7 miles apart. Two investigations that seem to be a one size fits all investigation because f the similarities, from unconfirmed DNA reports to the use of fridges and the macabre dismembering of bodies etc!
How conincidental is this?
How many ither children has this happned to and they have not been reported by their families for fear of reprisals, threats, intimidation and corruption?

Just how many people in Portugal have made a lot of money out of abducted children like Joana Cipriano and Madeleine McCann? They have turned abducted children into lucrative money making ventures, how do we know that these children haven't been abducted in order to help people with money worries make a lot of money in lucrative book deals, interviews, films, writing newspaper columns etc etc etc?

I believe there is enough evidence here about the people concerned in all of this for an official investigation into possible corruption and children being abducted to order for whatever reasons.

The Portuguese government must realise that the "Genie" is now out of the bottle and it is unable to be placed back in, the world is now beginning to sit up and take notice about what has been happeneing in Portugal and not least the EU.

This is NOT going to go away!

Two questions;

1. Who had the most to lose if Joana Cipriano was found?
   
2. Who had themost to lose if Madeleine McCann was found?
   

The only reasons why the appeals against the leniency of Goncalo Amaral's criminal conviction and the acquitals of the other ex PJ officers, have not been heard is because bizarrely, the Portuguese court has *NOT* reimbursed the members of jury for Amaral's and Cristovao's and the others trials and until this is done, the appeals cannot go ahead and be heard.

*Come on Portugal, STOP prevaricating and pay the jurors their compensation, it makes no odds how long you try and delay this, this is NOT going to go away, too many people now know and more people each day across the world are beginning to know. The more you delay, the worse this seems and the worse this will become and the bigger the stain on Portugal's name and reputation.

This will not end until Portugal does the right thing, no matter how painful that may be! This is part and parcel of being a democracy!

I agree with you Rosiepops.

Totally agree.......