MADELEINE McCANN UPDATE 19

I have been keeping my views on this case to myself. I decided to let it play out and wait for any new developments before making my views known.

Madeleine has now been missing since she was abducted by someone on May 3rd 2007.

Now we have Inspector Oligario Sousa seemingly complaining about the press. I am no fan of the press, but they serve the purpose of getting the news to the public and they play an important role when they report the news and leave their views out.

Here's a Blog Flash to Inspector Oligario Sousa. Get off your ass and find out what happened to Madeleine. I and others do not care one iota if you are frustrated with the press. All we care about is that Madeleine is found. Dead or Alive. Madeleine's parents need to know what happened to her. It is the living without answers that destroys families.

Here's another fact. If you are found to be incompetent, which it looks like there is a good chance that could be true, your little resort town will be a ghost town.

Families want action, not excuses. Inspector Oligario Sousa you have had 18 days to find out what happened. You have named a formal suspect and a possible accomplice. Now get the job done and find out where Madeleine is located.

Reporting The Hunt For Madeleine: Media and police collide on the Algarve.

British journalists have been baffled by the Portuguese police in the search for Madeleine McCann, and vice versa. Has the press been a help or a hindrance? Ian Herbert investigates.
Published: 21 May 2007


MADELEINE MCCANN

The Madeleine McCann case has created some surprises for Inspector Oligario Sousa, the public face of the Portuguese police inquiry, whose eccentric press conferences have become required viewing for those who hang on the inquiry's every twist and turn. The difficulties of handing out a press statement is one of them.

"You are not a child. If you don't stop I will not give it," the school-masterly Mr Sousa says on Thursday evening as journalists jostle for one of 30 he dishes out ahead of what is, in the loosest sense of the word, a briefing. There are no new facts in the statement (Mr Sousa doesn't seem to think his appearances necessarily warrant any) but ITN's Geraint Vincent tears his copy in the tussle, and the BBC's Richard Bilton shakes his head in resignation as his is wrenched from his hands.

That's how things get when a global story like this is so bereft of genuine new detail each day. When it was reported two weeks ago that a roadblock had been put in place in Nelas, a town six hours north of Praia da Luz, Sky TV's chartered flight was already in the air before news arrived that this, like so many other possible sightings of Madeleine, was yet another false alarm. The Sun has made it over the Spanish border twice, after putative sightings of a suspect near Seville and at the border town of Ayamonte. And when nothing is moving, there is always the pitched battle over Madeleine reward posters to pass the time. When the News of the World assumed its place at the table here, the Saturday before last, its people set about ripping down The Sun's efforts and substituting their own. Sky's Kay Burley, jetted over to substitute for Anna Botting that weekend, was overheard reporting this felony to Rebecca Wade, but the carnage continued apace.

And then, just when the police and a critical British media - baffled by the local segredo de justica law which prevented so much as an e-fit being revealed - seemed to be on different planets, the latter went and provided the former with their best lead to date. Such were the media suspicions about the Briton Robert Murat (subsequently Mr Sousa's "chief suspect") that on another slow Monday seven days ago, journalists were deliberating the merits of pursuing him as a story. Those who set off in search of Mr Murat's villa did not know it was 160 yards from the McCann's apartment and already being searched by police. At two minutes to 7pm, word had it that the villa was being searched and an appearance by the British Ambassador, scheduled for 7pm, was abandoned as journalists made a mad sprint to the site. Suspicions registered with police by the Sunday Mirror's Lori Campbell had, it seemed, been looked at after all. She was immediately propelled to a place in front of the TV camera.

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