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.
