By Leanne Baulch:

PJGA was founded as a quest for justice and backed by supporters from all over the globe, in solidarity, friendship and above all, in the interest of furthering the investigation of the case into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Within this scope, with the relentless support of those who will not let this case pass into obscurity, who do not tolerate the leaving of unanswered questions, there are many who follow Amaral’s dissatisfaction, and whom, like him, urge for the day the truth, or some more of it will emerge.

During the last months of 2009, a group of Gonçalo Amaral friends realised that it would be impossible for him to face the costs of his defence in the civil suit that was filed against him personally – as well as against others – brought by the McCann couple and their children, in response to his book “Maddie, A Verdade Da Mentira”.

Lawsuits in Portugal are expensive, like anywhere else in the world, and the Portuguese State will only help funding legal costs if one is completely destitute. With part of his pension and the total of his assets frozen, Gonçalo Amaral would not be able to cover the legal expenses; what was left of his pension was barely enough to meet everyday living costs, but it was more than enough for the State to refuse financial support. 

Therefore, his friends decided to open a private bank account, where funds would be kept to pay, whenever necessary and whenever possible, expenses that were presented by Mr Amaral’s lawyer. Projecto Justiça Gonçalo Amaral was born out of solidarity and friendship.

The trial is ongoing, since 2009, nothing has changed, pending final judgment. We continue to accept your donations only into this one bank account and we continue to meet only legal expenses out of that very same account.

If any funds are left unused, they will be donated to a Portuguese children’s charity, according to Gonçalo Amaral’s wishes.

There are many ways to contribute to this Project. You can help by spreading information about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann by highlighting the Case File information. You can help by voicing your support for freedom of expression and freedom of opinion. You can help by supporting Gonçalo Amaral’s defence account.

We trust that Justice will be served.

Thank you.
 
Any money donated to this account, will be directly transferred to the PJGA account. Please help Goncalo.

http://www.gofundme.com/Legal-DefencePJGA

Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann forum

For latest news on the McCann case:

 Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann forum

Buried by Mainstream Media - The True Story of Madeleine McCann

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New free e-book: What really happened to Madeleine McCann by Michael McLean

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Free e-book:  What really happened to Madeleine McCann by Michael McLean


Put yourself in the mind of a detective and work it out for yourself

Or put yourself in the place of a parent, and ask:
If you had let your child go on holiday with the McCanns and they lost her, would you accept their version?

For latest news on the McCann case: Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann forum

Maddie case: Scotland Yard joins forces with Portugal - or do they?

Dear Kate and Gerry - Yours, David (with photo...?)

Let me separate out for consideration the two reviews going on at the moment.

Take the Scotland Yard review first. Here are a few salient facts:

* The Leicestershire Police were on familiar terms with the McCanns and their friends

* They called the lead detective, Chief Superintendent Stuart Prior, 'Stu'

* Leicestershire Police gave Gerry McCann a personal tour of their incident room in the early weeks of the hunt for Madeleine

* Leicestershire Police did the McCanns' bidding. They jumped to their tune in preparing a front-page 'Exclusive' on the (alleged) 'sightings' of Monsterman/Cooperman in January 2008

* For the first time ever in world history, they linked their own website to the website of suspects who was asking the public to give THEM information and to give them MONEY

* The McCanns called for a Review

* They got a Review

* The Prime Minister of Great Britain announced he was providing £3.5 million funding for the Review on the very day (12 May 2011) that Kate McCann's book was published

* On the very same day, the Prime Minister's spokesman said that the Review was being undertaken 'to support the family'

* The SY Review Team has said that its remit is to treat THE ABDUCTION as if it happened in Britain, not Portugal.

There are no signs that I can see from the above that the Scotland Yard Review Team intends to do anything other than to maintain the abduction scenario. I would love to be proved wrong.

They say they have 37 detectives working on the case. If their average salary is say £40,000 a year (and I bet it's more), the Review would cost £1,480,000 = $2.35 million in one year, NOT including the cost of all their trips to Barcelona and Portugal etc. = air fares plus hotels plus meals.

Leicester police deliver flowers for the prime suspects

NOW, looking at developments in Portugal.

Grounds for optimism:

a) there is a new team in charge, in Oporto

b) the spokesman for that team appeared to say they began their review BEFORE the Scotland Yard Review Team were appointed

c) there are some signals that they may have re-opened a review because of fresh information, HOWEVER there was also a contradictory statement saying there was nothing new, and they were simply reviewing the old files

d) Amaral broke the news about 'new developments that are not going the McCanns' way, so he appears to be more in touch with what is happening than the McCanns.

Grounds for pessimism:

a) they are in touch with Scotland Yard. Are the two perhaps in collusion, to suppress the truth?

b) they say they have been working on the review for a year, but come up with nothing.

I don't see any real grounds for optimism from what I see.

But you never know.

Around £20 million (= $31 million) has been spent on this case so far, and do we have one usable piece of information about who the abductor might be? - NO...or where Madeleine might have been taken to? - NO.

-----
Further reading:

The cost of looking for Madeleine so far. £20 million?

Madeleine's Fund - Review & Investigation of Accounts

The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann forum

Note to David, British Prime Minister: This is Eddie, the British sniffer dog, alerting to death scent in the McCanns' hire car

Maddie McCann and the billion people who can buy Goncalo Amaral's book versus the 'free speech' nation which cannot

MADELEINE McCANN

The 1,100,000,000 people who can buy,

read and discuss ‘The Truth About A Lie’ -

and the ‘free speech’ nation which cannot

A discussion document issued by the Madeleine McCann Research Group, 14 February 2012

On 20 October 2010, the Portuguese Appeal Court made a historic decision in the long-running case of Dr Gerald McCann and Dr Kate McCann -v- Dr Goncalo Amaral.

After a lower Portuguese Court had banned his book for 13 months, the Appeal Court decided, having regard to the right to freedom of speech and expression, that it was not libellous for his book, once again, to be freely sold in Portugal (and other countries, such as Brazil), where Portuguese is spoken.

We reproduce relevant extracts of the judgement below.

Not only has Dr Amaral’s book on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, ‘The Truth About A Lie’, been freely available in Portuguese-speaking countries for the past 16 months, it has also, since various dates from September 2008 onwards, been available in no fewer than eight different languages, and all the countries that speak those languages.

We’ve done a calculation as to which countries have Dr Amaral’s book on sale in their main language. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

Andorra

Argentina

Austria

Belgium

Bolivia

Chile

Cuba

Denmark

Ecuador

France

Germany

Guatemala

Holland

Honduras

Italy

Luxembourg

Mexico

Nicaragua

Norway

Paraguay

Peru

San Marino

Spain

Surinam

Sweden

Switzerland

Uruguay

Venezuela.

We estimate that around 1,100,000,000 people live in those countries: 1.1 billion, or nearly one-sixth of the world’s population.

Madeleine McCann was a British girl, born and bred in England, a land famed the world over for its freedoms, including the right of free speech. Yet Dr Amaral’s book cannot be published and sold in this country. Indeed, not only that, former Madeleine Foundation Secretary Tony Bennett currently faces a term of imprisonment for, amongst other things, referring to that book. In July 2010, for example, the Madeleine Foundation published a leaflet about Dr Goncalo Amaral, in which this statement appeared:

“In ‘The Truth About A Lie’, Dr Amaral explains why he and his team had good grounds for believing Madeleine had died in her parents’ apartment and covered up her death”.

That was and is a true - 100% factual statement. Yet as The Madeleine Foundation reported last year, the McCanns believe that the British public should not even be able to read that sentence. Carter-Ruck told the Madeleine Foundation that that sentence in their leaflet was libellous.

The world has turned upside down. Over a billion people worldwide can read the account by the initial senior detective in the case of the history of, conclusions arrived at, in his investigation.

But the people in the land where Madeleine was born, so the McCanns say, should not be allowed to read it.

There are in fact translations of Dr Amaral’s book available on the internet. Such is the power of the McCanns’ lawyers, Carter-Ruck, however, that we are not sure if we can give you the links here. So we won’t.

But what we can and will do is reproduce those parts of the Portuguese Appeal Court’s judgement which explain just how widely in the world Dr Amaral’s book can be bought and read:

EXTRACTS FROM THE JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF APPEAL

IN PORTUGAL - IN THE CASE OF McCANNS -v- AMARAL

On 24 July 2008, the defendant Dr Goncalo Amaral first published his book, through publishers Guerra e Paz.

In that book, Dr Amaral put forward the following hypothesis:

• That the child Madeleine McCann died in the Ocean Club apartment G5A in Vila da Luz, on the evening of 3 May 2007

• That the McCanns and their friends fabricated an abduction

• That Dr Kate Healy and Dr Gerald McCann are suspected of involvement in the concealment of their daughter’s body

• That the death may have been the outcome of a tragic accident

• That there are indications of neglect of the care and safety of the children.

Dr Amaral’s book was published in four editions by the end of July, a further nine by the end of August, and another 12 by end of September. Each edition was of around 10,000 copies. [Thus, in all, around 250,000 copies were printed]. At the time of our decision, the book had been sold out at practically all points of sale.

When the book was published, Dr Amaral gave an interview to the newspaper Correia da Manha, published on 24 July 2008. In that interview, he explained his analysis of the case. He also gave interviews later to all other media that asked him for an interview, each time defending the book’s thesis.

At the beginning of May 2009, Dr Amaral published his book in France, this time under the title: ‘Maddie, L’Enquete interdite: Les revelations du commissaire portugais charge de l’enquete [The revelations of the Portuguese co-ordinator of the investigation].

Dr Amaral also gave countless interviews to several media in France, including the one that was published by Le Parisien newspaper in both its paper and online editions. In those interviews, Dr Amaral continued to promote his hypothesis on the case. The book’s French edition was, and continues to be, systematically and prolifically promoted on the internet, for example on the following websites: [a long list of websites follows] .

Between the date when the Portuguese edition was published [24 July 2008] and the date of the book’s French edition [May 2009], Televisao Independente (TVI) broadcast a TV programme produced by Valentim de Carvalho for the company Filmes, Audiovisuais, SA [FASA], who hold the copyright of the documentary.

The first transmission of that programme was on 13 April 2009, the second on 12 May 2009. This programme was essentially based on the contents of Dr Amaral’s book: ‘Maddie: The Truth About A Lie’. In that documentary, Dr Amaral appears and continues to advance his theory (a) that Madeleine is no longer alive (b) that her death occurred within their Ocean Club apartment, and (c) that her parents, the McCanns, concealed their daughter’s body.

At least 2,200,000 people viewed the first screening of this programme.

At the end of April 2009, a DVD of the programme was made, with the following title and subtitle: ‘Maddie - The Truth About A Lie: A powerful documentary based on the best-seller ‘The Truth About A Lie’ by Goncalo Amaral. Already, 75,000 copies of this DVD have been distributed for sale. The DVD is published on FASA’s website.

All the actions within the investigation that Dr Amaral reports in his book are documented within the investigation file. Not only that, but the investigation documents were also made available in electronic format, not only to the national media, but to international media. These media proceeded to divulge the contents of the reports and statements from the investigation file. This publication of the electronic reports naturally enabled knowledge of the facts of the investigation to be circulated. Public comments were made and soon there was universal discussion of the contents of the investigation file. Any individual in the world can have access to these facts and to the documents of the investigation which enabled the facts of the investigation to be verified. All of this was only a click on the mouse away.

The friends of the McCanns did not make themselves available in Portugal to attend a reconstruction [of the events of 3 May 2007]. This is all documented on pages 4,636 to 4,638 of Volume XII of the ‘Investigation Processos’ files, complied by the Prosecutor’s office.

Dr Amaral’s book was published, through other editors, in several countries, as well as in France, as we referred to above.

The publications occurred as follows:

• In Spain, September 2008, titled ‘Maddie - La verdad de la mentira’

• This was distributed in the Spanish/Castilian language in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries

• In Denmark, in November 200, titled ‘Maddie - Sandheden on Lognem’.

• This Danish edition was then published in the Nordic countries of Norway and Sweden

• In Italy, December 2008, titled ‘Maddie - La Verita della Menzonga’.

• That edition was distributed in Italian-speaking countries all over the world

• In Holland, April 2009, titled ‘Maddie - De Waarheide Achter de Leugen’.

• That was distributed in Dutch-speaking countries throughout the world

• In Germany, in June 2009, with the tile: ‘Maddie - De Wahrheit uber die Luge’

• This was also distributed in German-speaking countries, including Austria and Switzerland.

• There is also an English version circulating on the internet, on the web site www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/PJ/TRANSLATIONS.htm , where a Portuguese version can also be found.

Published by the Madeleine McCann Research Group, 14 February 2012