The search for Madeleine McCann, or any child, should be above politics

http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/news-opinion/paddy-clancy-search-madeleine-mccann-3268714

Clancy's craic: The search for Madeleine McCann, or any child, should be above politics

Mar 21, 2014 15:310
OPINION BY PADDYCLANCY

If both the UK and Portugese police forces work together, at least Maddie's family will be able to say everything was done to find their little girl.

Little Madeleine McCann is a constant reminder for me around this time every year of how devastation can be brought to a family in an instant.

Her disappearance seven years ago remains a great mystery.

Who took the three-year-old from her holiday apartment in Portugal while her parents dined nearby?

Is she still alive and, if so, is she still under guard?

Does she remember who snatched her from her bed or has she now forgotten all that happened in the past to her?

Does she even still speak English or has she adapted to the foreign language of her captor?

Or is Madeline dead, killed by a captor who has hidden her body so that not a single policeman in Portugal, her home country Britain or her other holiday rendezvous in Donegal has been able to find one trace of what happened?

None of the questions I have raised has been answered.

Appalling though they are we must remember they are probably contemplated every day by her family.

I know they occur to me every year about this time. Why?

Because when Madeline disappeared in May 2007 from Praia da Luz in the Algarve I was soon afterwards involved in reporting an aspect of her story.

She holidayed in Donegal just a few weeks before she disappeared and a few days after she vanished I spoke to Joe Peoples for the first time.

I have spoken to him a number of times since, usually around the anniversary of Maddie's disappearance.

Joe and his family run a pub in St Johnston in East Donegal which is leased from Maddie's grandmother Eileen McCann.

Eileen and her late husband were Donegal natives and they loved returning to the county with their family, including her son Gerry and his wife Kate who are Maddie's parents.

They were on their way to Dungloe for Easter 2007 when they dropped into the pub in St Johnston.

I still remember the first words of Joe Peoples as he recalled after Maddie's disappearance what she was like.

He said: "She was the centre of attention when the family called in. She was a wee dote, running around everywhere and into everything."

I've just been speaking to Joe again. He still vividly remembers little Maddie in the bar on what was the family's last totally pleasurable visit to his pub.

He hasn't seen Maddie's granny for a few years now. But each year around this time he thinks of her, and Maddie, and Gerry and Kate.

Like everybody who knew them in Donegal, he probably wonders how the McCann family continues to cope with the hell visited upon them when Maddie was snatched. I know I do!

I know, also, that their suffering might have been eased at least marginally if the Portuguese police investigation had a proper cop in charge.

Instead, they put Goncalo Amaral in charge and he decided Maddie died accidentally and the McCanns invented the abduction scene.

He was later transferred and eventually resigned from the police. A book he wrote spurred a libel action which is still before the courts.

The Portuguese police shut down the case in 2008 but reopened it last year when they said a review had justified a new inquiry.

That was after Scotland Yard got on the case.

Now, two police forces are investigating, and Scotland Yard are operating with one hand tied behind their back and not a leg permanently on the ground where the crime happened.

In the last few months British investigators have sent three international letters of request to the Portuguese authorities without, apparently, any word for a go-ahead on the ground.

This week, the Yard's Deputy Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt said he is frustrated at how slow the legal process has been.

He added: "We know what we want to do and we are ready to go with that. But the process is the process."

Does anybody at any senior level in the Portuguese police or the Portuguese government have a little girl that might remind them of Maddie McCann?

Do they wonder that if anything happened their little girl would two police forces act separately with one only able to operate at a fraction of its potential?

Do they ever think how much better it would be if red tape, both political and judicial, was sliced immediately without any frustrating delay?

The police in Britain, despite obstacles put in their way, have revealed a number of people who at least should be questioned, including one man who broke into British villas in the Algarve and sexually assaulted young girls in the years immediately prior to Maddie's disappearance.

It's time for everybody to remember they are trying to find out seven years later what happened to a little child. It's no time for politics.

If forces are joined even at this late stage you never know what might happen.

Even if Maddie remains missing at least her family will be able to say at last that the best endeavours have been used to find her.

That's an awful lot more than they have been able to say so far!