Robert Murat Making News

I am going to be fascinated to read this, I am surprised that Robert Murat is being so outspoken. Not accusing, just pointing out, but if anyone has a shaky alibi, it's him. IMO.

Fascinating to see that the currently-exploding forkers and hounders have failed to notice that the story is by JAMES MURRAY.

And morning brings the now-traditional collapse of last night's insane imaginings from the McCann-haters - all that frantic tick-tocking gone to waste as usual!

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/397244/Bring-them-all-back-to-Portugal

'Bring them all back to Portugal’

ROBERT MURAT today appeals for Scotland Yard to stage a filmed reconstruction of all the events surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

By: James MurrayPublished: Sun, May 5, 2013



Mr Murat, who was cleared as a suspect, said: “They need to start from the beginning.” So far the two-year review by more than 20 detectives in London has not led to a breakthrough.

Portugal’s authorities have not been persuaded to reopen the investigation, although Policia Judiciaria policewoman Helena Monteiro liaises regularly with officers from the Yard’s Operation Grange.

Mr Murat, 39, spoke to the Sunday Express while sipping tea in Casa ­Liliana, his elderly mother Jenny’s villa 150 yards from apartment 5a of the Ocean Club where Madeleine vanished.

He said: “They need to speak to everybody, including myself, and they need to get the Portuguese involved in a much more constructive way.

“To get somewhere now they need to have a joint team working here together in Praia da Luz. This is where it happened. It didn’t happen in England.

“The reconstruction should cover the critical period just before and after the abduction.”

Madeleine was three when she disappeared from the apartment at about 9.15pm while her parents Kate and Gerry McCann and seven friends ate at a tapas bar nearby. When the Judiciaria named the McCanns as suspects, they and their friends chose not to take part in a PJ-led reconstruction. It would be different now that they have been cleared, said Mr Murat.

He said: “A reconstruction is a real necessity. I am sure it would fill in some of the missing pieces of the jigsaw. Even now after all this time, the timeline is still confused.”

Thirteen days after Madeleine’s disappearance Mr Murat was named as a suspect. His mother’s home, where he lived then, was searched, his computers were taken, he was questioned for 19 hours by Portuguese police and his property business was wrecked.

His eagerness to help with the original investigation, helping police with translations, aroused a journalist’s suspicions. Three of the McCanns’ friends believed they saw him on the night Madeleine vanished but his mother confirmed to police he was with her all night at Casa Liliana.

After being cleared as a suspect in July 2008 he won substantial damages from newspapers.

Despite his ordeal he believes Madeleine’s fate should be uppermost in everybody’s minds as another anniversary passes.

He said: “You cannot lose sight of the fact that a child was taken and we need to know what happened to her.”

He is still willing to be interviewed by the review team, which has made no effort to contact him. “I have no problem with that whatsoever,” he said emphatically.

“I am available to help on the proper legal basis. I think everybody who was around at that time, holidaymakers and people at the Ocean Club, should be interviewed again. The timeline needs to be made crystal clear because there is still so much confusion, such a mess.”

Asked if he thought Madeleine’s fate would ever be known, he brushed back his thick dark brown hair, rubbed his tanned chin and said: “I hope so, I believe it will come out one day.” He said Portugal’s financial crisis means “if the British do want to get to the bottom of this, it is a case of funding the Portuguese”.

Mr Murat, who grew up in Devon and Portugal, now has a young family with wife Michaela. They were both victims of the relentless media frenzy when Madeleine vanished and it has left its scars. For the first time during the interview he became emotional and said in a whisper: “There is no way to describe the impact this has had on our lives. Six years later it still affects me. I wasn’t able to do much for years and years.

“It was difficult getting back on the horse, so to speak, and do the stuff I was doing before.”

His property business went, partly because his computers were held by the PJ for so long, but now he has built up Newteq, an Apple-authorised service provider on the Algarve. He said he and Michaela live a quiet life, staying away from some events because people still come up to him and say: “You’re that Mr Murat.”

Before 2007 he says he was one of those people who was always eager to help others, to get involved in the community. Now he is more guarded.

When the original police investigation was at its height, he bumped into a British man, Steve Carpenter, who persuaded him to meet the McCanns because they needed his language skills. He said: “I met Gerry and said: ‘I don’t know what to say, there is nothing I can say but I do speak Portuguese and English and I will help in any way I can’.”

He helped Portugal’s GNR military officers to search the Ocean Club apartments and translated statements from key witnesses, giving him a unique inside perspective on the case.

He said: “From the experiences of the interviews there are some points that could be looked at.

“There needs to be much more transparency, much more openness to dissipate a lot of the stuff that has been talked about on the internet and on blogs.”

He does not believe the results of the Yard’s work should be made available to the public.

“The Yard needs to get together with the Portuguese police and ¬produce a final report,” he said. “They need to sit down together and come up with a final version, a structured report.

“The report should be done by the Portuguese with the support of the British.”

Last week Prime Minister David Cameron had a private meeting with the McCanns in London, promising them the review would not fall foul of budget cuts and giving them enough confidence to say on their website that they hope for a significant breakthrough in the months ahead.

On Friday night Kate and Gerry, both 45, gathered around a candle which burns night and day for Madeleine outside their home village of Rothley, Leicestershire. A 50-strong crowd supported them as they marked the anniversary with prayers with Madeleine’s ¬siblings, eight-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

Mr Murat said: “It must be a ¬tremendously difficult time of year for them and of course as a human being you feel for them and for the loss of their daughter.

“At this time of year, like so many people on the Algarve, we have been thinking about this poor girl.

“I just hope in the months ahead the PJ are fully involved because in my view that is the best way of solving the mystery.”

At St Vincent’s church in Praia da Luz, where Kate and Gerry went regularly, worshippers also prayed for Madeleine, whose 10th birthday is on May 12.

Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ spokesman, declined to comment on Mr Murat’s views last night, saying the couple were happy with how Scotland Yard is conducting the review.

“The reconstruction should cover the critical period just before and after the abduction.”

Read it and weep, haters.

Unlike them, Robert Murat is not a vicious, cruel, person - which is one of the many reasons they would have been well advised to keep their nasty mouths shut until they read the article.

Hope they are taking in the bit about the McCanns and Murat being cleared? Grasping the meaning of it?

My personal opinion is that, after all this time, a real-life re-enactment, over so long, involving so many people, is a logical impossibility - and would cost a huge sum of money.

IMO, the cyber forensic reconstruction the Yard did is more sensible; it allows for variables, shows what is possible and what's not, and doesn't involve a cast of thousands, each with a different POV, as always happens with supposed 'eye witnesses' - just about the LEAST reliable form of evidence.

Anyway, the only reconstruction that could have helped find Madeleine six years ago, just after she was abducted, is the one Amoral cancelled because of bullsh*t about having to stop planes overflying PDL.

Interesting, though, and good to see Robert Murat looking so well - unlike the disgrace to the PJ who tried intimidation tactics on him, and went on to spread disgusting gossip in his grubby little 'book'.

Incidentally, I do hope it's sunk in with the forkers and hounders that Robert Murat did NOT say the words attributed to him on the cover of the Express.

Yet again, they worked themselves into a frenzy of Tick-tocking and Tide-turning over nothing.

http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=1475.30

Clearly the Express have taken a throw away comment by Murat about a possible reconstruction and spun it into a front page sensation in order to flog their tainted product.

Spot on.

And a timely reminder from Gilet on Justice of Amoral's efforts to intimidate Robert Murat:

http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=1475.30

Robert Murat was in his thirties and living with his mother. Half English and Half Portuguese, when Madeleine went missing he offered his skills to the Portuguese Police as a translator. But eleven days in with no quick resolution to the investigation in sight the spotlight turned on him. Now Robert Murat believes that with the Portuguese Police under pressure he was an easy scapegoat.

ROBERT MURAT: At one stage I was taken to an area where they wanted to fingerprint me and take photographs and all that kind of stuff. And I think they were trying to disorient,er, me because they moved me around from room to room, hallway to hallway, corridor to corridor and it seemed very choreographed calling out, “Well, take photographs of him” and you know, he’s, er, “We want to send a team to Poland.” It was kind of a choreographed situation.

RB: What, to intimidate you?

ROBERT MURAT: Yeah, I think so. And it did intimidate me at the time. Its now that I realise what was going on. I had five people rushing into a room and, erm, and standing behind me and it felt very very ‘Life on Mars’. It felt very, er you know, erm, just very pressured.

RB: He was questioned for nineteen hours before he was released. The next day he returned to collect his belongings and Robert Murat says he met Goncalo Amaral, the lead detective.

ROBERT MURAT: He basically told me it was a game of two halves and as the night before I hadn’t confessed, erm, then, he would get me on the second half and he just kind of turned his back on me. He didn’t… He just… It seemed he didn’t care about the truth. That was the, thats how I felt.

Murat must have been absolutely terrified - he would know better than most what Amoral was like. He would have every reason to fear an 'accident' on those dangerous police station stairs.

It's a good job the media was there in force; they may well have saved Murat from an 'accident' or 'suicide attempt' as an Anglo-Portuguese citizen coming out of the police station covered in bruises would have attracted media attention.

I wonder if that's why Gonc went to such lengths to smear Robert Murat in his grubby little 'book'?

http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/397203/Police-must-keep-up-effort-to-solve-Madeleine-riddle

Police must keep up effort to solve Madeleine riddle

SIX years have now passed since Madeleine McCann went missing during a family holiday in Portugal.

Despite their unimaginable suffering, parents Kate and Gerry have campaigned without rest to keep their daughter's case in the public eye and maintain pressure on the police for that vital resolution.

So we can only hope that the couple are justified in their current belief that a significant breakthrough in the case is just around the corner.

In two years, the £4.5million case review by homicide detectives at Scotland Yard has failed to shed new light on events of that evening in 2007 or to persuade the Portuguese authorities to reopen the investigation.

No one expects Operation Grange to provide a running commentary on its review but revelations that Scotland Yard has yet to interview key witness and former suspect Robert Murat must surely raise questions.

Mr Murat has rebuilt his life since he was cleared of all suspicion over Madeleine's disappearance and stands ready and willing to help.

He cannot understand why a full reconstruction of the night has not been conducted and believes other key witnesses have also not been reinterviewed.

No matter how terrible the case, Scotland Yard must account for the public money being spent in pursuit of the truth.

Questions must be asked as to whether all key witnesses will be reinterviewed and, if not, why not? The passage of time must not render the search for Madeleine any less exhaustive.

---------------

I wonder if the reason he hasn't been interviewed is that he simply has nothing to add?

He was sitting in his mum's kitchen when Madeleine was abducted, did some translating for the PJ and hung around smoking with the GNR a bit...then got targeted by a Perfect Storm of UK journos jumping to conclusions, and Amoral thinking the perfect patsy had fallen into his lap.

Does Murat actually know anything to be interviewed about? I doubt it.

“There needs to be much more transparency, much more openness to dissipate a lot of the stuff that has been talked about on the internet and on blogs.”

What are the odds he's been hanging around hate sites because of hounders like Brown, and more especially Birch, and thinks those tw@ts are far more important than they really are?

That he doesn't realise that there are very few of them in reality, and that they're only legends in their own lunchtimes?

Peter Davies ‏@Muttfan 3h
@perrymint I am sure that Joana Morais will update us of anything significant, she usually brings us the #McCann news from Portugal & Spain

Not if it doesn't suit her agenda she doesn't. The sheeples really have NO idea how much news she censors, do they?

Still waiting for someone to explain why the Yard would want to re-interview Robert Murat, as he was cleared at the same time as the McCanns, due to having been sitting in his mum's kitchen at the time Madeleine was abducted.

I hardly think sharing ciggies with the police will be of great interest.

JillyCL ‏@JillyCL 3h
@winnower1 @umweltbuerger @mariaccnr I think 72 hours would cover it. Mrs Fenn >> George Brooks sighting. #McCann

Do they have the slightest idea how ridiculous that is? A three-day 'reconstruction', whatever they imagine that would be?

Are they planning to broadcast it like three series of 24, or something? Bonkers, the lot of them.

JillyCL ‏@JillyCL 3h
@AnnaEsse @w_nicht @umweltbuerger @Zwicky321 Oldfield also said the square table was round & described a bookcase that wasn't there! #McCann

Best call Spielberg and borrow his props department, table shapes are clearly of crucial importance.

Mr. Mitchell´s words are mine:

"Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ spokesman, declined to comment on Mr Murat’s views last night, saying the couple were happy with how Scotland Yard is conducting the review."

I hadn't seen this before:

http://miscarriageofjustice.co/index.php?topic=1475.90

by Paolo Reiss - Gazeta Digital

"20.5.07 Madeleine McCann’s abduction - Special Report (05:05 am, May 20 - 2007)

Robert Murat was under close police surveillance since the morning of May 4, the day after Madeleine was abducted.
The main suspect (and only one, until now) in the Madeleine McCann abduction, Robert Murat, was under close police surveillance since the morning of May 4, the following day to the child disappearance. From that moment on, all of his movements and contacts were monitored by investigators of Polícia Judiciária (PJ - Portuguese Criminal Investigation Department).

On the early hours of that day, after the first journalists arrived at the local, Murat was near the Ocean Club and talked with several of them. Casually dressed, with jeans, blue plastic sandals and a blue and white chequered shirt, Murat took the initiative to talk with two Portuguese journalists, saying that he knew very well Madeleine’s parents, that they were both doctors, and he was “deeply disturbed with the abduction, because he had a three year old daughter who, by coincidence, was also called Madeleine”.
His daughter, as was later revealed, is called Sophia.

During that day, Murat seemed to be everywhere, helping British journalists with translations, buying water in Batista supermarket to take to the GNR policemen guarding the area, asking if there was any news about Madeleine and even giving some predictions, like: “They will never find the child, probably she is already in Spain”, one the first Portuguese journalists at the crime scene told Gazeta Digital. These kinds of comments were also reported by British journalists.

Next day, May 5, Saturday, he followed the same pattern.
That day, around 7:00 pm, a Portuguese journalist saw him sitting at a table of Batista’s supermarket terrace, chatting with a young man – the Russian computer expert Sergei Malinka who was also questioned by police and is a witness in this case. Murat and Malinka were here, sitting side by side, on Saturday May 5.

But on Sunday, according to Portuguese journalists, Murat seemed to have vanished. Most of them say they never saw him, but some say that he was there, sporadically, and adopting a lower profile. After Sunday, May 6, he didn’t showed up, at all. British Press reported that he went to UK, for a couple of days, and then back to Portugal. Gazeta Digital has learned that Portuguese police was able to get extensive and detailed footage of Murat’s movements and contacts, while he was among journalists and police officers or inside the Ocean Club, during those days. "
--------------

I must say, I am growing increasingly puzzled as to why Robert Murat has done this. It's most odd, IMO, that he should decide to kick this hornet's nest when his life is settled, and he is a fairly wealthy man.

It isn't as if any 'reconstruction' would involve him, as all he was doing when Madeleine was abducted was sitting at a kitchen table.

Interesting to see that even one or two of the McCann-haters are puzzled by this. I simply cannot think of a single good reason for Mr Murat to have done this. Indeed, in his shoes, most would be worried in case the Yard were taking a long, hard look at his ever-changing stories.

I am also none too sure that the Yard would be entirely impressed with, I was in the kitchen, ask my mum.

All most odd.

Oh, I've just remembered - Robert Murat was involved with Max Clifford for a while, wasn't he?

Wonder if Murat's worried about that, or something Clifford knows about him?

http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/832833/

Clifford 'not happy' with Robert Murat, no longer advising 'arguido' suspect

That was an odd business.

Oh, and the haters really need to stop kidding themselves that this is some kind of labyrinthine plot by the Express to 'send a message' or something equally stupid.

The Express, like the rest of the media, exists to sell copies of the Express; in the old saying, If they want to send a message, they'll use Western Union.

Re: OMG - Sunday Express tomorrow BRING THEM ALL BACK TO PORTUGAL
PeterMac Today at 11:58 am

The Express want their money back.

Then they will be looking to retrieve it from the people who caused them to lose it, won't they - SOURCES IN THE PJ.

Witness Gonc's babblings to James Murray about 'abductors' and 'CCTV' - it doesn't matter what the forkers and hounders think he meant to say, what matters is what he said to Mr Murray ON THE RECORD.

Likewise Robert Murat. Why on earth would he want an epic, 48-hour 'reconstruction' when the only time HIS movements are accounted for is the time of Madeleine's abduction when he was in his mum's kitchen and didn't even hear anything.

Oh, and the hours when he was hanging round with the police and acting as a translator.

I don't know what happens to people when James Murray meets them in PDL - does he get them drunk, or something?

Because every time it happens, they seem to come out with the most wierd things ON THE RECORD.

A reconstruction was made through Mr. Dave Edgar with his team, with the participation of Mr. McCann also with Mrs. Jane Tanner.

Indeed, it was, Pedro.

Like many others, I just don't 'get' this obsession with 'reconstructions'. The only one that could have helped find Madeleine McCann was the one Gonc cancelled early in May 2007, using some rubbish about having to close the airspace over PDL as an excuse.

After that, it was pointless. As for a '48 hour reconstruction' - what a stupid idea! That would involve THOUSANDS of people; PDL has physically changed since 2007, and it is impossible, real-world, to recreate lighting and weather, etc., accurately.

HOWEVER - it is comparatively simple to create a cyber-reconstruction of the situation on the evening of May 3rd, 2007, as Scotland Yard did. With a cyber-reconstruction, variables can be put in without involving hundreds of people. It's simple to factor in the weather, lighting, etc.

And that is why Scotland Yard know Madeleine McCann was abducted.

The more I read, the more I am mystified as to Robert Murat's intervention yesterday. After all, there's nothing stopping him from picking up the phone and speaking to the Yard, if he thinks he knows something that he hasn't bothered to mention over the past six years.

A WUM returns to the hounderfold:

stillsloppingout wrote:
I was sitting outside Preston Nick waiting for Nigel Evans MP to leave ,[ my pic of him in the car leaving ] and was having a chat to my old mate who was a snapper over at the time in PDL who i have mentioned before . The first thing i asked him was " Do you have any news old or new re the Mccann case? . He confirmed in his opinion that the payouts were a major stumbling block . But that that HIS involvement with Hacked off HAS hacked off the top brass in the media [ how can you support a guy in the press on one hand ,who is trying to destroy you [ the Press ] on the other ? ]

The same story is repeated today in the Daily Star. It should open up some lively debate , I have stated on other forums [b]ONLY Murat can get this thing moving again , this is a subtle and deliberate act .

ORLY? So, Murat has been sitting on information relating to a child abduction for six years, has he? Along with his mega-payout?

I seem to recall he and his friends won higher damages from the media than the McCanns did....

Couldn't he have got things moving again by letting Birch dig up his back garden? Surely finding nothing would have sparked so much publicity, that things would almost certainly have started 'moving'?

I wonder if Robert Murat is pissed off with still being torn to shreds on Forums. Is this still happening to him in Portugal?

If you think about it, Scotland Yard have no jurisdiction over Robert Murat, and would be stepping on the toes of The Portuguese Judiciary if they attempted to interview him.

bb1, your words are mine.

Sabot wrote:
I wonder if Robert Murat is pissed off with still being torn to shreds on Forums. Is this still happening to him in Portugal?

If you think about it, Scotland Yard have no jurisdiction over Robert Murat, and would be stepping on the toes of The Portuguese Judiciary if they attempted to interview him.

Now here's a thing - when Birch was on the loose, a lot of the McCann-haters were demanding that Murat let Birch dig up his mother's garden to 'prove' Madeleine wasn't buried in it.

I cannot think of any other recent time he's even been on the radar till this weekend, Sabot, which is why this interview is striking many as a bit odd.

Remember, Bennett's lot welcomed Birch with open arms, and Bennett keeps 'dossiers' on Murat. If Murat has been reading that....who knows?

But the Yard don't have to 'attempt' to interview Murat, Sabot, he is perfecting at liberty to pick up the phone and speak to them, or visit them when he's on one of his trips to the UK.

It's all very peculiar, IMO.

About: "being torn to shreds on Forums", I don´t know if that is happening, but, if it is happening, could be mostly at Algarve.

why involving Scotland Yard (whose true commitment is to find Madeleine)

in his problems, which are his concern?

I don´t understand.