By: CECÍLIA PIRES
PORTUGUESE POLICE investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have said they are keeping “all scenarios in the open” while they wait for the forensic results on a blood sample collected from the McCanns holiday apartment.
As the police investigation appears to have stalled once more, Madeleine’s parents have been commenting on the problem of abducted children and the non-existent cooperation between European countries to register identified paedophiles.
Their focus on child abduction was only troubled by the cover page of a Portuguese newspaper, Tal e Qual, saying the parents were being considered as suspects of murdering their daughter by the PJ.
For the first time since Madeleine disappeared, the McCanns reacted violently and announced their intention of seeking redress in court against the newspaper. “This lurid allegation is so serious and wide off the mark that we feel it cannot go unchallenged,” said Gerry McCann.
Not suspects
According to Olegário Sousa, spokesman of the Polícia Judiciária on the case, despite the information printed in the media, “all is still in the open and all lines of investigation are being considered.” And he added: “The parents are not considered as suspects so far.”
He told The Resident that the report on the forensic examination of the traces collected from the apartment of the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, where the McCann family was spending holidays, were still to be released by the Birmingham lab. “We have not received any report until this moment”, he said on Tuesday. “Even if the tests confirm that the blood is from Madeleine McCann, it’s necessary to demonstrate and prove that the blood was in that location as a consequence of a crime,” he said.
“If, and only if, that’s the case, the quantity and distribution of it will help to determine a crime scene,” added Olegário Sousa.
In the meantime, speculation about the return of the McCanns to the family home, in Rothley, Leicestershire, is growing. Some newspapers have even raised the possibility that the recent scaling down of the Find Madeleine Campaign happened following representations by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office.
Reports of growing political pressure from the UK about the Madeleine McCann case is something that the Portuguese police spokesman refused to admit. “We don’t have reasons to believe in such a possibility,” he said. Asked about the media coverage at present, Olegário Sousa said that the number of phone calls from foreign journalists “has dropped drastically in the last few days” but he could not explain why.
This apparent scaling down of British media interest, and a marked withdrawal of press people from Praia da Luz, supports rumours that the McCanns may also be under pressure to go back to the UK, which is at odds to Gerry and Kate’s previous insistence they do not intend to go back before their daughter is found.
Family members, quoted in daily newspapers, are saying that Gerry is being advised to return by his closest friends due to worries about his health. With the rental contract on the villa where they are staying now coming to its end, the McCann are now admitting that they will have to go home eventually.
Justine McGuiness, the manager and PR of the Find Madeleine Campaign, is leaving the campaign and is to be replaced in the next few weeks.
She has also told The Resident that the McCanns “will leave Portugal but they have not reached a decision about the exact moment to do so”.
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