By CHRIS GRAEME
THE FORMER police chief who headed the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has stood by controversial and potentially libellous statements in his tell-all expose Maddie – The Truth of the Lie, Maddie, a Verdade da Mentira, published in Lisbon on Thursday, July 24.
In his book, ex-Polícia Judiciária inspector Gonçalo Amaral reiterates some of his controversial beliefs, which have been reported over the past year in some Portuguese-language newspapers.
Now Kate and Gerry McCann say they will sue the ex-inspector, who led the investigation for six months, for defamation of character and moral damage.
During a book launch and signing session at Lisbon department store El Core Ingles, Gonçalo Amaral, when asked by a British journalist what he thought of the McCann’s intention, replied ambiguously “a good person (i.e. an innocent person) doesn’t reply to provocations.”
Gonçalo Amaral made it quite clear that he did not fear any eventual legal court case against his book, saying “we can go to court and argue this case out”.
“I’m not scared because I live in a country where April 25 (Portugal’s democratic revolution in 1974) gave us back our rights, liberties and freedom of expression,” he said.
The former PJ inspector was also asked if he had written to book “only to earn money out of the McCann case.”
But he said he had already been contacted by British papers and offered “a lot of money” for excerpts of the book and first-hand accounts of the case but said that he had, through his publisher, refused the offer.
Gonçalo Amaral did tell journalists that there were “other things and facts related to the Maddie case” which had been left unsaid and that “not everything I know is in the book.”
When asked if he had written the book in a pique of revenge for being dismissed from the case, Goncalo Amaral said he felt no revenge in writing the book, adding that it was a description of the investigation carried out up until his departure.
“Our work is laid down here in the book,” he said.
Gonçalo Amaral also refused to give any further details over his allegation in the book that he was removed from the investigation after rumoured pressure from Gordon Brown and the United Kingdom in return for Britain’s agreement to sign the Treaty of Lisbon, which coincided with his dismissal from the case and the British government’s decision to sign the document.
In the book he criticises the British police as well as the friends of the McCanns who were with them in the Algarve.
And he claims the British police were slow to provide information asked for and took months to pass on a potentially vital witness statement.
He also calls into question the McCanns’ need to have a professional spokesperson and asks why their public image was so important to them.
The former Polícia Judiciária police inspector makes a number of other explosive suggestions in his book.
He also said that the case might not have been shelved if the information collected at the time of the investigation had been “valued differently” which could have happened “with another Ministerio Público,” – the Portuguese Prosecution Service.
The former inspector writes about “British government political meddling” and alleged “inconsistencies in the McCanns’ behaviour and the behaviour of their friends” with who they were on holiday in the Algarve.
The former inspector also he said that he had the feeling, at a particular moment, that the case would end up being shelved.
The former police inspector said that his only objective during the time he led the case was to discover the truth of the facts and that the book merely reflects the work carried out and developed by his team.
After the official book launch, the President of the Portuguese Union of Public Ministry Magistrates (SMMP), António Cluny, said that the comments made by Gonçalo Amaral offered “some food for thought.”
“I listened carefully to the statements made by the former PJ Inspector Gonçalo Amaral and they should be carefully considered,” he said.
The 224-page book sold out in some book shops within hours of hitting the shelves on Thursday morning.
Madeleine McCann, then aged 3, disappeared on May 3, 2007, while sleeping in a room at the Praia da Luz Ocean Club tourism complex, in Lagos, Algarve, while her parents were having dinner with friends at a nearby tapas bar within the same complex.
