Former PJ police coordinator Gonçalo Amaral – the perceived ‘thorn in the side’ of the parents of missing Madeleine McCann – has burst back into the news this week, insisting on the theory covered in his first book published on the child’s disappearance.
The little girl’s abduction was “simulated” he has told German newspaper Bild; the current ‘principal suspect’ in the frame Christian Brückner “had nothing to do with Madeleine’s disappearance” and parents Kate and Gerry remain, in his opinion, the “principal people responsible”.
The timing of this interview has been pivotal. First, it fires yet another broadside at the ongoing German investigation (already showing signs of being shambolic click here), second it rekindles interest in the world’s longest running missing person’s mystery ahead of publication of Amaral’s second book, due out in October.
His first “Maddie: The Truth of the Lie” ended up seeing the 61-year-old former PJ police chief pilloried through the courts. The process was a rollercoaster through which at times it seemed he had ‘lost everything’. But in 2017, after six years of litigation, the Supreme Court upheld his right to freedom of expression, and the McCanns appeared to have lost their million-euro defamation case against him (click here).
The McCanns have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, but in this case the ‘complaint’ is directed at Portugal and Portuguese Justice rather than Mr Amaral.
Since the McCann’s legal defeat, focus on the former police inspector has waned. The Madeleine mystery however gained new traction last summer when German prosecutors came out with the bizarre claim that they ‘knew’ the child was dead, but they just needed to find the evidence (click here) incriminating Brückner .
On Tuesday night, Amaral revisited this line of inquiry, trashing it wholeheartedly: how could Brückner have entered the apartment from which Madeleine went missing without leaving one fingerprint or biological trace, he queries. And how come the presumed point of entry – an open window into the bedroom where Madeleine lay sleeping with her siblings – only had prints, from the inside, of mother Kate?
None of Mr Amaral’s points are ‘new’. But his reappearance now, and the prospect of another book that has been years on the back burner, suggests new revelations could be on the way.
One comment made to Bild this week referred to Madeleine’s medical history. “Neither the parents nor the British authorities would allow access to this document”, said the former detective.
