Portuguese police ignored offer by Scotland Yard to review evidence
Kate McCannAn offer to provide senior Scotland Yard detectives to review the evidence in the Madeleine McCann case has been ignored by Portuguese police, The Times has learnt.
Investigative reviews by an outside force are standard practice in Britain and occur after just a few weeks in murder and child abduction cases if no great progress has been made.
The Metropolitan Police, highly regarded internationally in homicide investigation, are understood to have offered the services of experienced detectives several weeks ago when the search for Madeleine was floundering. The McCann family is believed to have asked, independently, for a review of the evidence. But Portuguese police have not responded in either instance.
A Portuguese judge was expected last night to authorise the seizure of Kate McCann’s diaries, her husband’s laptop and unidentified documents.
The couple are thought to have taken the items home to Rothley, Leicestershire, when they left the Algarve on Sunday. However, it may be that the police already have the possessions and are trying to regularise the position legally.
Judge Pedro Daniel dos Anjos Frias was appointed yesterday to consider an urgent request made by the public prosecutor in charge of the case, Jos� Cunha de Magalhães e Meneses.
The formal request to seize and analyse the items for potential evidence is due to be forwarded by the PolÍcia Judici�ria to Leicestershire police today.
Judge Frias received 4,000 pages of prosecution evidence on Tuesday and has ten days in which to decide whether further action should be taken in the investigation, or if there is insufficient prospect of successfully bringing a case against Mr or Mrs McCann.
The couple have always strenuously denied any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance and there is a growing sense among senior British detectives that the McCanns could become victims of a miscarriage of justice if they are extradited to Portu-gal. In a sign of the growing anxiety about the direction the police investigation is taking the couple have retained possession of the rented silver Renault M�gane from which DNA samples have been retrieved and are prepared to carry out their own independent forensic science tests to challenge any incriminating evidence.
A senior British police source said: “The quality of the evidence and especially the way it has been collected gives me great cause for concern. There are quite a lot of issues about the way the forensic science material has been recovered.”
DNA samples and other material are being analysed at the Forensic Science Service laboratory in Birming-ham, a world leader in crime scene investigation. But its staff have played no part in collecting the material they are testing. That has been led by Portuguese scenes-of-crime officers, assisted by Leicestershire police.
Sources said the evidence from the McCanns’ holiday apartment, from where Madeleine disappeared on May 3, would be almost worthless in a British court because of the risk of contamination by the number of people who have been in and out of the rooms since.
British detectives also say that the integrity of the Renault car hire car as evidence should have been better preserved. One said: “If this investigation was taking place in Britain that car would have been seized, taken into a laboratory and stripped down by forensic science technicians. The McCanns would certainly not have been allowed to continue driving it.”
There is also some unease about the role that Leicestershire police officers are playing in the investigation.
Officers from the force were deployed as family liaison officers to Mr and Mrs McCann in the days immediately after Madeleine’s disappearance. But more recently they have played an active part in assisting the Portuguese investigation as it focuses more closely on the parents.
The force refuses to comment beyond confirming its involvement. But a spokeswoman stressed: “No element of the inquiry is being led by British police.”
A friend of the McCann family told The Times that the couple had been “very shocked when the Portuguese police suddenly turned against them”. Mr and Mrs McCann were declared arguidos, or formal suspects, in Portimão on Friday.
