Processos Vol XVI
Page 4186
INFORMATIONDuring a recent trip to the UK made by the undersigned, accompanied by Inspectors João Carlos and Ricardo Paiva, to accompany the anticipated compliance with the letter of Request sent to the UK Justice authorities, Detective Superintendent Stuart Prior from the Leicestershire Constabulary told us the following:
- following the requests contained in the Letter of Request referring to establishing the availability of various witnesses to come to Portugal in order to carry out a reconstruction exercise of the events, these witnesses expressed some doubts and questions that they would like to see cleared up.
- these doubts and questions were sent to the Superintendent by means of electronic mail and phone calls, and he has asked the undersigned, as far as possible, to remove the difficulties that the construction might have and proceed to clarify;
Therefore and with the aim of completely clarifying these subjects, the document that immediately follows this was produced and sent, by email to Stuart Prior.
Portimão, 15th April 2008
Superior Coordinator
Paulo Rebelo
The following document (in English) (Page 4187)
Paulo Fernando Gaspar Rebelo
From : Paulo Fernando Gaspar Rebelo
Date : 15th April 2008
To : "Prior Stuart"
Subject : Wittnesses' Questions
Dear Stuart,
As previously agreed, here I send the answers to the questions raised by the holidaying group and Jeremy Wilkins regarding the re-inactment.
I also inform you, about the matter of Gerald McCann's credit cards intelligence, that the Prosecutor is not available to make any more changes to the LOR.
Thank you very much, again, for your fantastic cooperation.
Best regards,
Paulo Rebelo.
CSIC
Pages 4190-4192
topic24.htmlProcessos Volume XVI, pgs. 4190 to 4192
Letter from PJ (Paulo Rebelo) regarding details of proposed reconstruction (English)
Dear Stuart,
As agreed during our visit to Leicester last week, and in order to provide an answer to the questions raised by various witnesses in the investigation into the disappearance of the minor Madeleine McCann, regarding the possibility of carrying out a re-enactment on the site of the events, I shall inform you of the following:
1 – Regarding the arguido or formal suspect status of Gerald McCann and Kate McCann, it is not the PJ’s competence to take the decision on the respective clearance. Thus, it is not possible to ensure the arguido status will be changed;
2 – There is no need for the witnesses to be accompanied by their children. For efficiency and celerity purposes, we indeed request that the children don’t accompany their parents;
3 – The re-enactment, within the LOR, shall take place probably on May 15, 2008, between 5.30 p.m. and 11 p.m., thus covering the time period before dinner, dinner time and about an hour after having checked that the child had gone missing;
4 – A postponing of the re-enactment will only happen if the weather conditions are extremely bad, once the sites where most part of the events took place weren’t exposed to such conditions. We also add the draft agenda to the proceedings, which we plan to be as follows:
- May 15 – In the morning – Arrival to Portugal of the participants in the proceedings;
- - In the afternoon – The re-enactment
- May 16 – During the day – Preparation, by the PJ, of the records and documents of the proceedings which will be displayed, reviewed and signed by the participants;
- May 17 – In the morning or in the afternoon – Departure of the participants.
5 – The re-enactment will be carried out with the attendance of the nine holidaying friends, as well as, incidentally, any figurant considered to be necessary for a visualization of the events, i.e. a man carrying a child;
6 – The re-enactment site will be isolated, as much as possible, in order to preserve the security and the integrity of the proceedings. However, we can neither assure the evacuation of the population, nor guarantee the press won’t interfere out of the security perimeter which will be established. Thus, we will do our best efforts to try and avoid picture taking by the press. However, we can not completely ensure that won’t happen;
7 – The re-enactment will only turn out to be efficient if performed by the participants in the events, once the information provided by the same participants needs to be tested and efficiently compared on-site, and that can only be achieved by means of their own performances. Thus, the possibility of using actors has to be put aside;
8 – The request for the presence of witnesses was submitted through the LOR; the notification for the attendance of the arguidos falls under the competence of the Public Prosecutor’s Office;
9 – If it is their wish, the witnesses can be assisted by the Foreign Office and, in the proceedings, also by a legal representative, subject to the consent of the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Within the scope of the cooperation that has been taking place, the Leicestershire Police has already been invited to be present in the proceedings;
10 – If the conditions to make the re-enactments are achieved, the payments of participants’ airfares and the stay costs will be subject of later evaluation;
11 – The PJ will be responsible for ensuring personal security for all the participants in the proceedings and will facilitate transfers from and to the airport, and from and to the proceedings. The PJ does not foresee any hostile environment or the occurrence of events able to put the participants’ physical and psychological integrity at risk;
12 – The witnesses will be invited to participate in the re-enactment, but there are no suspicions over them regarding the commission of any criminal acts;
13 – The translation services of these inquiry proceedings will be provided by private officers of the PJ;
14 – The PJ considers this re-enactment to be highly important, and hopes the witnesses show their total cooperation, as they have been doing so far, towards finding out the truth.
We hope we have provided the answers to all the questions raised by the participants and, for logistics and case preparation purposes, we kindly request to be informed about the participants’ respective answers until April 25, 2008.
Best regards,
Paulo Rebelo
CSIC
(Doc linked in TOC)
