Madeleine - Portugal still waiting for official paperwork

My friends, this was taken from The Portugal News newspaper:

http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/madeleine-portugal-still-waiting-for-official-paperwork/28795

Madeleine - Portugal still waiting for official paperwork
BY TPN/ LUSA, IN GENERAL · 05-07-2013 12:53:00 · 2 COMMENTS

The office of Portugal's attorney general said "no request for mutual judicial assistance has yet been received" from British police regarding the formal investigation they have just opened into the disappearance of toddler Madeleine McCann in the Algarve in 2007.

The Portuguese authorities formally shelved the case in July 2008, and have said new evidence is needed to reopen it.

However, British police have been carrying out their own review of the case for more than a year, at the request of the UK government, and this week announced they were moving to a phase of active investigation.

They said that would involve further visits to Portugal, and formal requests for help from the local police and prosecutors.

But no such request has been received, according to the attorney-general's office.

"The obtaining of proof, in Portugal, presupposes the presentation of a request for mutual judicial assistance, commonly known as a rogatory letter, whose execution must be authorised by the Portuguese judicial authorities," it said in a statement sent to Lusa News Agency on Thursday.

"The British authorities cannot act on their own in Portugal."

It added that if their visit to Portugal to follow leads is authorities, British police "will not be able to direct any interrogation or effect any investigation, on their own account, in Portugal."

London's Metropolitan Police, who are undertaking Operation Grange, as it is known, this week revealed that they had a list of 38 people of interest to their investigation, including both British and Portuguese citizens.

Madeleine McCann disappeared on 3 May 2007 while she, her parents and her two younger siblings were holidaying in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.

At one point a local man, Robert Murat, was declared a person of interest by Portuguese police; later both her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were.

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Hope that isn't a hint, given that the 'local man' has dual nationality....

Never mind, he was at home with his mum all night, and all those people who saw him elsewhere were wrong. And anyway, Martin Smith was adamant that the man he saw carrying a child most definitely wasn't his old drinking buddy Robert!

 

At least it's a sensible report, unlike some of the more hysterical offerings which have made a bureaucratic process sounds as if Whitehall was about to send a gunboat up the Tagus.....

I agree with: "a sensible report, unlike some of the more hysterical offerings which have made a bureaucratic process sounds as if Whitehall was about to send a gunboat up the Tagus....."

Unfortunately, legal paperwork takes ages, Pedro, especially between two nations with different languages and legal systems.

It has to be correct. Hopefully, this is going to lead to the arrest of the scumbag/s who abducted Madeleine - and her safe return.

But how would anyone feel if the scumbags were freed on a technicality because the paperwork had been rushed? It's happened before.

Yes bb1, I agree with you.

bb1 wrote:Unfortunately, legal paperwork takes ages, Pedro, especially between two nations with different languages and legal systems.

It has to be correct.  Hopefully, this is going to lead to the arrest of the scumbag/s who abducted Madeleine - and her safe return.

But how would anyone feel if the scumbags were freed on a technicality because the paperwork had been rushed? It's happened before.

This is so true. The paper work has to be absolutely correct. As it had to be for The Rogatory Interviews.
This is not rocket science.