As the 8th anniversary of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Algarve, comes round, Sky News has reported that the “hate dossier” compiled against so-called anti-McCann online trolls will not result in any prosecutions.
The dossier – which led to the suicide of an alleged troll after she was ‘outed’ on live television – had been delivered to Leicester Police by what was described as an “anonymous source”.
Keenly involved in the story, Sky News’ reporter Martin Brunt now claims the anonymous source (or sources) have reacted with “absolute dismay” at the decision not to prosecute.
“They say it is tantamount to giving the trolls carte blanche to carry on abusing the McCanns,” he said.
“Although we haven’t heard directly from the McCanns, I’m sure they too will be astonished because when Sky News revealed this dossier in September last year, Gerry McCann said such trolls should be prosecuted.”
He called the dossier, delivered to police eight months ago, “a catalogue of abuse tweeted and posted online” by “antagonists” of Kate and Gerry McCann.
There were dozens of people identified, he added, who had all threatened “violence and even death against the couple”
The online posts included words like petrol and matches, handcuffs, shooting, torture and lynching, Brunt said.
This postscript to yet another ugly episode in the long-running mystery follows the verdict earlier this week in the five-year-fought defamation case taken out by Madeleine’s parents against former PJ inspector Gonçalo Amaral.
As widely reported, Amaral is appealing the judge’s decision that he should pay the McCann’s over €600,000 in damages and interest charges over the publication of his book The Truth of the Lie.
Meantime, the “anniversary stories” continue, with Sky News now suggesting British detectives “have discovered more of the holiday apartment burglaries they believe hold the key to solving the case”.
According to a report on Sky’s website today, police “had been investigating 18 break-ins in which intruders entered the bedrooms of young, mostly British girls.
“Now they are probing 28 such burglaries”, Sky News has learned.
Three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from the holiday apartment in Praia da Luz rented by her parents on May 3, 2007.
Commemorating what has become the greatest missing person mystery of all time – and certainly the most expensive in terms of police hunts – British newspapers have described the “continuing grief” of Madeleine’s parents as mother, Kate, is said to be “more driven than ever” to continue the search for her daughter and planning a 500 mile cycle between Edinburgh and London next month to raise £10,000 pounds for the Missing People charity, as well as promoting the UK’s Child Rescue Alert (CRA) system.
