Scotland Yard detectives investigating Madeleine McCann’s disappearance wish to interview Robert Murat, according to UK reports in the press which often has managed to merge fact and fiction with startling results.
The British expat lived close to the Praia da Luz holiday apartments where the McCanns were holidaying at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance and was questioned formally as an ‘arguido’ in 2007. He was cleared of any involvement.
Due to the British press taking the view that Murat was involved in Madeleine’s disappearance and printing many ill-conceived attacks on the expat, Murat and others won substantial damages from British media owners.
Murat and his friend Michaela Walczuch and IT consultant Sergey Malinka all took legal action against against Associated Newspapers, Express Newspapers, MGN Limited and News Group Newspapers over nearly 100 'seriously defamatory' articles. They won £600,000 in July 2008.
Scotland Yard’s review into Madeleine’s disappearance threw up Murat as one of the people British police want to have interviewed again but they seem again to be thwarted by the Portuguese police who are carrying out their own investigation along lines that seldom can be said to be in parallel.
The plan for these new interviews of old arguidos was that the Portuguese British police at least cooperated, with the Portuguese officers asking the questions and British police sitting in on the sessions.
Murat spoke to the UK’s Guardian newspaper today and denied that he yet had been asked to ‘pop down the station’ and that his lawyer also was unaware of pending interviews, but that he was happy to cooperate, “My conscience is clear and I have no problem speaking to police again.”
Collaboration between the two teams seems not to be happening with the Portuguese police still harbouring resentment that Operation Grange was set up to review and check their work.
The Portuguese authorities also are not pleased that their downplaying of a series of child sex attacks prior to Madeleine’s disappearance was widely used as an example of how useless they are, a view shared by many observers in the UK and Portugal but seldom openly stated for fear of upsetting them even more.
British detectives have to ask permission every time they fly to the Algarve to follow up their enquiries and the frequent delay to these permissions enables the local force to control events.
Comments
Someone familiar with area. And what the British Police will not yet have got from any Portuguese locals or Police .... fair comment.
He knows the history of the area. Characters to know about. Regulars at the Ocean Club. As he was feeding the McCanns - helpful suggestions. NO EDGE !
Ref: racism. Ask any British parent who has 'tried' to put their teenage son through the Portuguese school system. Pig ignorant teachers and school kids - causing such stress to the innocent child. So often meaning the parents ship the child home to the grandparents. Or up-sticks entirely.
If having white daughters they tend to get better treated as they have exotic 'skin'.
It is pig ignorant racism that has underpinned the treatment of the McCanns from the start.
And something entirely missing to the average troll ... that there is a principle behind the UK Police repeating what the Portuguese Police skipped over. That there was a crime ...
Ideally this missing Madeline would have gone unreported as with the previous and subsequent 'child molestations' !
If he is asked to make a further statement I am sure he will be happy to do so in helping to solve this mystery. 'Arguido'does not mean guilty of anything but he may have smething to add.
The Portuguese police want to silence Murat because he might say something about supposed Portuguese racism. Salazar's "gestapo" have something to do with it. Everyone is frightened to speak, even though you can make public statements on this website. And the Golden Vistas (sic) scandal is somehow connected.
OK.
The guy had grown up in Portugal, gone through their schooling and experiencing the worst of their racism.
EXACTLY NOT what the Portuguese Police wanted briefing the McCann parents and the British newspapers.
Keep reminding yourself as well of the no-change 1974 Revolution.
The pillars that kept Salazars regime in place were fundamentally the police (including the GNR). Amongst these were the dreaded PIDE - their Gestapo.
PIDE officers had the individual right to be 'judge and jury' to a perceived wrong doer. Someone out of line could lose not just everything they own but also their lives. Obliterated from existence!
Then think of the struggle the people at the Conselho de Prevenção da Corrupção have today ! Each report complains of the difficulty getting anyone to speak out. For FEAR.
http://www.cpc.tcontas.pt/
And Golden Vistas shows just how little Portugal has travelled towards being a modern developed society. It was set up as an 'earner'.
And only stopped by other EU countries saying "Please,No more dodgy Chinese in the EU!"