Soon, very soon the world will know the "Truth about the Lie" and "we will gain truth and justice for a little girl who
has no voice", dead on the evening of May 3rd at apartment 5A, Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, Algarve, Portugal" - Gonçalo Amaral, 22 April 2008
Gonçalo Amaral with wife Sofia
Message to readers of this site, from Gonçalo Amaral - 22 April 2008
As you can understand, I can't do any comment about the investigation on the "McCann Case"... (I have omitted the next
part, in the interests of privacy and it did not in any way compromise the judicial secrecy laws)
Looking towards my freedom of speech, I asked for my retirement last month. All the insults, false accusations and lie's
from the past year are now being brought to court from my lawyers (the very last one is from Daily Mail, yesterday).
I
would like to say thank you to the thousands of persons that every day, for the last year, are supporting me all over the
world. I would like to answer all the phone calls, emails and letters, but is not possible...there are so many! As you can
imagine, most of the days are not that easy, and these messages have been a great support not only for me, but also for my
family. Once again, thank you all!
You're allowed do display this message on you site, and I thank you for that. One last thing:
*Soon, very soon the world will know the "Truth about the Lie" and "we will gain truth and justice for a little girl who
has no voice", dead on the evening of May 3rd at apartment 5A, Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, Algarve, Portugal"*
Best regards, Gonçalo Amaral
Conversation among policemen..., 03 July 2008
Conversation among policemen... ASFIC-PJ Blog (union of the PJ)
Thursday,
July 3, 2008 Thanks to Astro for translation
When, in late 1983 (it's
been some 25 years) me and a few other colleagues, after finishing the training at the School, we were placed in the Training
Group which operated at the then called SCITE/CICD, at the end of the Rua Conde de Redondo.
There, we met a group
of police investigators whose characteristics, both individually and as a group, and the way they worked, led us (at least
most of us) to want to be placed there permanently.
In fact, the motivation and the dedication to service, the
enthusiasm and the joy with which they carried out their functions, the competence and the professionalism that they demonstrated,
were for us, recent trainees from the Barro School, the certainty that the profession that we were just starting translated
into an activity filled with achievement and into a magnificent career with a radiant future.
Many of those colleagues
were more or less our age, not much older than us, from the immediately preceding training course, and therefore, had just
completed their internship.
Among them was Gonçalo Amaral. Maybe with more abundant hair than now, and eventually
a little lighter. The rest of him was just the same. Back then already, we were surprised by his commitment to the profession,
the competence that he displayed, the assurance with which he worked, the courage with which he went everywhere and faced
any situation and any adversary. In the same way, the good mood with which he faced setbacks and adversities of the function,
as well as the tolerance with which he faced the sometimes irreverent jokes by one or another colleague (and I should say
so, as conscience accuses me of having been such, not only a few times), were notorious.
Later on, Gonçalo
would go to work in Faro and in Ponta Delgada. Always with the personal availability and the professional capacity that are
his characteristic. And in all of the countless areas that are nowadays included in the work of a Polícia Judiciária
investigator. Investigating homicides or collecting information about organised crime networks. Analysing documentation that
concerned complex financial movements or capturing dangerous individuals. Without eschewing difficulties or losing heart when
faced with setbacks. Showing his face and taking on the fight. Always.
Back in Lisbon, and in the fight against
drugs trafficking, Gonçalo was nominated, still as an Agent, to head a Investigation Squad at the DCITE. Anyone who
was with that department at that time, will remember that the results that were achieved by that Squad, under the charismatic
leadership of Gonçalo Amaral, soon surpassed the average statistics. The numbers that were achieved by him and his
men, both in terms of arrested individuals, and of narcotics or possessions and valuables that were apprehended, or even of
condemnations in court, marked an epoch at the DCITE and set an example.
I know. I remember it well. I was there.
He would accumulate the leadership of the Squad with the role of a University student. And his characteristic form
of direction, always direct and frontal, in a style of permanent and fully assumed leadership, always present and always available,
did not refrain him from, as swiftly as permitted, achieving a degree in Law. Despite his earlier training in Engineering.
We met again at the training to become Subinspectors. Once more, Gonçalo showed his remarkable work capacity,
as he completed that training, intensive and demanding, in accumulation with the leadership of the Investigation Squad. Once
more, his significant studying ability was patent, as he finished the training top of his class of 99 colleagues.
He would, later on and as a natural and logical consequence of his professional career and his life, apply to become a Criminal
Investigation Coordinator, and as expected, he was promoted to that functional category soon afterwards.
Then...
Well, approximately one year ago, we all watched, stupefied, a sort of spectacle that had until then been unheard
of, among us. Like in the witch hunts of the past, a certain media (mainly English, but unfortunately not only that) destroyed
a Man from the Portuguese Polícia Judiciária in public. A high-ranking Criminal Investigation career official.
A colleague and a friend to so many of us. A character assassination like no other employee of this House had ever been a
victim of, before. And why?
Because, as had always been his hallmark, Dr. Gonçalo Amaral, a Polícia
Judiciária Criminal Investigation Coordinator, went to fight, committed himself, faced, bravely and decidedly, the
difficulties and the setbacks of a service case that is extremely complex and whose outlines are still undefined, and may
remain so forever.
Maybe for the first time in the Polícia Judiciária's History, an investigator
is exposed in public and his private life is rummaged. Merely because he was investigating a certain suspicious case. Because
he was working. Maybe the Portuguese State, the Public Administration, our Polícia Judiciária, should have mechanisms
in place to protect its representatives in situations like this one. In order to safeguard them as they carry out their professional
activity for the benefit of Public Service. Maybe all of us, colleagues in profession, should have stood up, and honouring
the so famous, so traditional and so bandied about "Esprit de Corps" that they say is characteristic of our "House",
should have somehow manifested our support of Dr. Gonçalo Amaral.
None of that happened. Gonçalo
was alone.
If this strategy catches in the future, tomorrow, when facing powerful, well connected arguidos, it
could be other investigators who suffer this ordeal. It could be any one of us. And that may, in a way, mean the end of criminal
investigation. At least in the way that we see it and develop it.
May this case be an object for reflection. And
an example. And may it allow for us to create ways to avoid its repetition. The ASFICPJ should, maybe, analyse all of this
situation, in a serious, conscientious and exhaustive manner. It is its obligation, too.
My friend Gonçalo,
I sincerely regret your leaving the Polícia Judiciária, which seems precocious to me, because I admit that you
still had a lot to give to the cause of Society, of Justice and of Public Service. Furthermore, our "House" does
not own that many resources, both in quality and in quantity, to be able to afford not profiting from them, or, even worse,
wasting them.
The only thing that is left for me, facing the reality of facts, is to thank you for your friendship,
and to wish you the best of happiness and of success in the new stage of your life that you decided to start now.
Lisboa, July 3, 2008, João Fernandes Figueira A.S.F.I.C./P.J. member nr. 711
The following article is the one that is commonly quoted as having led to the removal of
Gonçalo Amaral from the investigation:
PJ accuse English police of favouring the McCann couple, 02 October
2007
PJ accuse English police of favouring the McCann couple Diário
de Notícias
"The British police have only been working on the issues that the McCann couple
wants, and which are convenient to them." It was with an explosive and rebellious tone that the coordinator of the investigation
into the Madeleine case, Gonçalo Amaral, commented in brief statements to DN the news that was published yesterday in several
English newspapers. This news was about an anonymous email that was sent to Prince Charles' official site, which accuses an
ex-employee of the Ocean Club of kidnapping the four-year-old girl, as an act of revenge against the resort's administration,
after having been dismissed.
"That situation is completely set aside, and it has no credibility whatsoever for
Portuguese police", the leader of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Portimao told DN, considering that his English
colleagues "have been investigating leads and information that were created and worked by the McCanns, forgetting that the
couple are suspected of the death of their daughter Madeleine".
"That story of a kidnapping for revenge is another
fact that was worked by the McCanns", Gonçalo Amaral accused, stressing that the Ocean Club "is located in Praia da Luz and
not in London, which means that everything that concerns the resort and its employees (present or former) was already, or
is being, investigated by the Policia Judiciaria". "It's not an email, even less an anonymous one, which is easy to track,
that is going to distract our investigation line", he said.
Gonçalo Amaral, before entering the CID in Portimao, was
at the PJ's Directory in Faro, having been mainly responsible for fighting drug traffic.
The position of the coordinator
of CID in Portimao comes to meet the statements that were made to DN by the president of the Union of Criminal Investigation
Employees (ASFIC), Carlos Anjos, who accuses Gerry and Kate McCann of "trying to distract and confuse the investigation by
announcing a new fact on a daily basis". For him, as DN could report, "the McCanns have launched a campaign to discredit the
Portuguese police when it presented the theory of the girl's death, substituting that of an abduction, which was very convenient
to them". "As long as the theory of the disappearance because of a suspected abduction subsisted, the PJ were very pleasant
company for the couple. When things changed and the death theory emerged, there was a radical change in the stance of the
McCanns, who by the way never helped or facilitated, since the beginning, the investigation".
In late August,
early September, a few days before Gerry and Kate were constituted arguidos, for suspicions of the negligent death of their
daughter Madeleine, a top member of staff of Judiciaria commented the following: "After buying ourselves a war with British
media, we are now buying one with English police."
Over the last few weeks, the Policia Judiciaria has been silent,
which was helped by the fact that the spokesman of this force for that case, Olegario Sousa, has left that function, which
he occupied since the child's disappearance.
Investigator says
that Maddie is dead, 03 May 2008
"We will
gain truth and justice for a little girl who has no voice, dead on the evening of May 3rd at apartment 5A, Ocean Club, Praia da Luz"The sentence is from Gonçalo Amaral, former-coordinator of the inquiry
into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Word by word, the
inner feelings integrate the text sent by the inspector of the Judicial Police (PJ) - in pre-retirement - for an English site,
which collects information on the mystery created around the English child, missing one year ago today.
The message was published on April 22 and is followed with the announcement that 'soon, very soon, the World will go
to know 'truth of the lie''. Curiously, it is the heading of the book that, as CM already reported, Gonçalo Amaral intends
to launch, with explosive data on his investigating experience whilst with the PJ during the period when he was at the front
of the Maddie case.
CM knows that this is the full conviction of this
element of the PJ, which is based on 'strong indications' which lead them to follow the theory of negligent homicide, following
an accident inside the apartment where the McCann couple were on holiday.
On the same British site (www.mccannfiles.com), without
ever accusing anybody, Gonçalo Amaral relates that "I can't do any
comment about the investigation on the "McCann Case", so as 'not to compromise the secret of justice'.
He also underlines that, looking towards his proper
freedom of speech, he asked for retirement from the Judiciary in the month of May. At the same time, he thanked 'the support
of thousands of people' that have contacted
him and have sent letters and e-mails, from all over the world.
Gonçalo Amaral also clarifies that "All the insults, false accusations and lie's from the past year (when he still investigated the
Maddie case) are now being brought to court from my lawyers", as was already notified by CM.
On the same British site - whose author says 'to look for the truth on Madeleine McCann and to highlight
concerns and inconsistencies' - the result of a poll on what happened to Madeleine is published, where the great majority
of the voters declared that the English child 'died as the result of an accident involving the parents'.
Former inspector of the PJ believes that Maddie is dead, 03 May 2008
Former inspector of the PJ believes that Maddie is dead - RTP video featuring Gonçalo Amaral's email to
this site
Gonçalo Amaral, the former inspector of the PJ, removed during the investigation, for the first time,
made a public declaration on a British site on the internet.
The ex-inspector doesn’t have any doubt that Maddie is
dead and that the truth will be known very soon.
03 May 2008
Thanks to 'Luz' from the3arguidos forum for
translation
[00:00] This is a confession (desabafo)
written in English, «soon, very soon the world will know the Truth of the Lie».
[00:04) These are the words of Gonçalo Amaral and they are the first since
he was removed from the investigation on Maddie’s case.
[00:15] «…and it will gain truth and
justice for a little girl, who has no voice, dead on the evening of may 3rd, at the apartment 5A, Ocean Club, Praia da Luz,
Algarve».
[00:26] In October, declarations to the press about an alleged favouring of the British Police to
the McCann, opened to him the exit door of the PJ. Gonçalo Amaral is now in a process of pre-retirement.
[00:35] On
the British site, that collects information about the disappearance of Maddie, the ex-investigator left thanks, confessions...,
and he «doesn’t say more because of the secret of justice».
[00:50] He
doesn’t speak about his retirement from the Judiciária, but for those that defend him, they make, with caution, a reading,
[00:57] "I think that his removal may have been useful, I don’t know
to whom, but may have been useful at least on one fact: we knew for sure that as long as he remained in the process there
would be a strong investment in the investigation" (Paulo Santos – G. Amaral's lawyer)
[01:13] One year has already
gone by and what we know about the night of May 3rd remains involved in mystery. Making a reconstruction of the disappearance
is a hypothesis that is not excluded by PJ.
[01:25] And in case that happens, Alipio Ribeiro says that the presence
of the parents is very important. In declarations to the Lusa Agency, the National Director of the PJ "considers that it would
be of indispensable that the McCann couple accepted to participate under the Portuguese legal rules".
Gonçalo Amaral will strengthen the range
of specialised columnists at CM. The author of 'The Truth of the Lie', who has now published his book, will share
with the reader a different view on the criminal investigation and its contours and also on the issues of Justice.
As
of Saturday, do not miss 'Matter of Fact', signed by the man who was investigating for the Judicial Police since 1981.
Gonçalo Amaral, Ex-coordinator
of criminal investigation
02 August 2008 - 00h30
"A criminal investigation does not have to be
politically correct."
Those who knew me through social communication got an opinion based on my connection with the
so-called Maddie Case. During the investigation and after being removed, I was a target of the most terrible accusations from
the British press, some local commentators and a man named Clarence Mitchell, whose role is not very well understood. On the
eve of the publication of the book you already know, this gentleman was sending me threats : "that I should take care" - I
was stunned!
Let me make it clear that I consider this to be an unacceptable tone, coming from a citizen of the oldest
democracy in the world. Take care, why? Because I might step on a banana peel while walking? Is Mr Mitchell concerned about
my health? I do not think so. We all perceive his threatening tone.
In Portugal, we are not used to people speaking
that way. Nor is this the view we have of the British people, but there are always some people that fall out of standards.
A criminal investigation need not be politically correct, nor fear veiled threats. The book only contains facts and contains
no indictment. So the differences stand out.
Gonçalo Amaral - 'Matter of Fact' column,
09 August 2008
Gonçalo Amaral, Ex-coordinator of criminal investigation
Saturday, 9 August 2008
Thanks to 'astro' for translation
The
so-called "Maddie Case" process was made public last Monday. On that day, a new era in the relationship between the Portuguese
Justice and the public was started. Journalists from all over the world jumped on the thousands of pages, looking for secrets
as if they were the key to a mystery. It did not take more than a few hours for the brilliant minds to discover what a vast
team of Portuguese and English investigators and experts hadn't found in 14 months.
Leads and sightings jumped up in
great numbers – all of them credible and despised by the police, obviously. It is only elementary commonsense that the
process is read and re-read, so it can be understood completely and in a serene manner; criticism, if it exists, should come
afterwards, or we risk falling into the gratuitous sensationalism that some of the press victimised us to (us, incautious
citizens). The right to inform is not to speculate. And that is not what is expected from our journalists who, truth be told,
always knew how to distinguish themselves from the British. Do not lose reason now. You are thanked by Justice, by the citizens
– and, let’s not forget, by the child that disappeared on the 3rd of May 2007.
Rights for paedophiles and witnesses, 27
September 2008
