New FOI Act request for information about Operation Grange (19 December 2019) UPDATE on its work & funding

Dear Metropolitan Police Service (MPS),

Information regarding Operation Grange is requested.

By way of background, at around 10.00pm on Thursday 3 May 2007, Madeleine McCann was reported missing. On 15 May 2007, Robert Murat was declared a formal suspect (‘arguido’). On 7 September 2007 the McCanns were also made formal suspects. In July 2008, following reports from the Portuguese Judiciary Police and the Attorney-General, the Portuguese investigation was shelved on the basis that there was insufficient evidence to charge any person with either of two crimes: (1) abduction or (2) homicide and hiding a cadaver. Accordingly Mr Murat and the McCanns were relieved of their suspect status.

On 12 May 2011, in  response to a request the previous day from Rebekah Brooks,  then Editor of the Sun newspaper, the then Prime Minister David Cameron ordered the then  Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, to set up an investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance, which the Prime Minister’s spokesman said was ‘to help the family’.

Today (December 2019), over 12½ years since Madeleine was reported missing, and over 8½ years after Operation Grange was set up, it would appear that the Metropolitan Police is no nearer to providing  an  answer as to what really happened to Madeleine McCann. It has now been one of the United Kingdom’s longest-running and most expensive enquiries ever, costing at least £12 million so far with no sign whatsoever that any significant progress has been made.

As long ago as 26 April 2015, a number of newspapers reported that Operation Grange was to be scaled down from 29 full-time officers to just four.

Impressive statistics were given by Operation Grange at the time.

1,338 statements taken
1,027 exhibits collected
650 sex offenders considered
8,685 potential sightings of Madeleine around the world considered
560 lines of enquiry pursued
over 11,000 mobile phone records seized and examined
31 rogatory requests sent to a number of countries
several suspects (some of them named) questioned and/or interviewed under caution.

The reports indicated at the time that the Home Office granted another £2 million to Operation Grange for further investigative work until April 2016. Many people, not least members of the London Assembly, have expressed grave doubts about the purpose of the investigation, its length, cost and modus operandi.

Hence I submit these questions:

1.       Do you have any updates on the numbers of (a) statements taken (b) exhibits collected (c) 650 sex offenders considered (d) sightings of Madeleine around the world considered (e) lines of enquiry pursued (f) mobile phone records seized and examined (g) rogatory requests made and (g) suspects questioned and/or interviewed under caution? If so, please supply the updated figures.

2        Up to what date has the Home Office currently authorised funding for Operation 
Grange?

3        Who is the current Senior Investigating Officer and how many full-time or part-time staff does s/he have and, of those, how many are detectives and how many are support staff?

4        There have been several media reports in the past two years, some of which are said to have been sourced from Operation Grange insiders, suggesting that the current Operation Grange suspect for the abduction of Madeleine is a paedophile in a German prison. Can the Metropolitan Police now confirm whether that is the case, or, alternatively, state whether they now have any other prime suspect in view.

5.       Please state any dates when any Operation Grange detectives have met in person with their Portuguese counterparts since 1 April 2015.

6.       Please list the dates of any travel to foreign countries made by any Operation Grange detectives since 1 April 2015 and name the countries involved.

I would be grateful.

Yours faithfully

Anthony Bennett
-------------

https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16705-new-foi-act-request-for-information-about-operation-grange-19-december-2019-update-on-its-work-funding

All FOI's into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are filed here: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/f49-foi-requests-into-the-disappearance-of-madeleine-mccann

Email from retired Police Superintendent PeterMac to Operation Grange following the review of Operation Midland

Furious Priti Patel ordered a root and branch review of Britain’s biggest police force

E-Mail sent to Operation Grange

*****

From: Peter Mac*** <**********@hotmail.com>

To: grange 

Sent: Fri, Oct 4, 2019 4:40 pm

Subject: FAO . DCI WALL, and the Grange Team

Dear DCI Wall,

I refer to today's reports of the enquiry into Operation Midland.

 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/carl-beech-operation-midland-review-henriques-report-met-police-a9142856.html

"Sir Richard, who was commissioned to review the investigation by the Metropolitan Police in February 2016, concluded: 

“The principal cause of the many failures in this investigation was poor judgement and a failure to accurately evaluate known facts and to react to them. 

“A major contributing factor was the culture that ‘victims’ must be believed. 

“Whilst the responsible Officers assert that they kept an open mind, several failures can only be explained by an unwarranted and disproportionate belief in ‘Nick's’ credibility.”

The review said that major inconsistencies between Beech’s accounts, a lack of corroborating evidence and overall “implausibility” was not properly challenged.”

May we, the tax-paying public, now have confidence that Operation Grange will take note of this report, 

will start to have an open mind, will cease automatically to believe the ‘victims’ [the McCanns], 

and will now begin to take account of the major inconsistencies between the McCanns’ and the Tapas 7’s accounts, 

the complete lack of any corroborating evidence, and will properly challenge the overall "implausibility" of the scenario put forward as the ‘Official Account’, bearing in mind the overwhelming weight of contrary evidence.

I remain, Ma'am,

Yours sincerely

Peter Mac****

BSC, LLB, MA

retired Police Superintendent

Nottingham 1972 - 2000

For the avoidance of doubt, and so that it shall be understood, I reserve the right to put this communication into the public domain.

***

ENDS

An automatically generated acknowledgement was received.

***

From: Operation.Grange@met.police.uk 

Sent: 04 October 2019 15:40

To: pmac*****@hotmail.com <*********@hotmail.com>

Subject: Automated Response

Many thanks for taking the time to contact the Operation Grange mailbox.

Your email will be read by one of the officers on the enquiry team. You will appreciate that we receive a large volume of emails as part of this enquiry and as a result you may not necessarily receive any further contact from us. If, however we need to contact you further, an officer will be in touch in due course.

NOTICE - This email and any attachments are solely for the intended recipient and may be confidential.  If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete it from your system.  Do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this email or in any attachment without the permission of the sender.  Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) communication systems are monitored to the extent permitted by law and any email and/or attachments may be read by monitoring staff.  Only specified personnel are authorised to conclude binding agreements on behalf of the MPS by email and no responsibility is accepted for unauthorised agreements reached with other personnel.  While reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure no viruses are present in this email, its security and that of any attachments cannot be guaranteed.

 

****

ENDS

Which may be PoliceSpeak for . . .

CMOMM: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16562-carl-beech-found-guilty-of-paedophilia-and-perjury

OUTSIDE THE OLD BAILEY Former decorated Leicestershire Constabulary officer Dionne Miller tells how Gordon Brown & Jacqui Smith ordered all police forces not to investigate grooming gangs

Watch this very powerful and courageous 9-minute speech today outside the Old Bailey by former Leicestershire Constabulary Officer Dionne Miller.

This video was uploaded this afternoon to YouTube by Mark Braithwaite.

LORD Mark Braithwaite, that is.

Opening her speech, Dionne informs the crowd listening to her how Gordon Brown with her Home Secretary Jacqui Smith ordered ALL British police forces to REFRAIN from investigating Muslim grooming gangs. Watch the video to hear why they gave this order.

Then remember that it was the very same Jacqui Smith who in late 2007 and 2008 ACTIVELY SUPPRESSED information about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann which the Portuguese Police were frantically trying to find out.

Please listen to the whole of the video and WEEP at the state of British policing today.

And reflect also on how easy it would be to simply tell Leicestershire Police and Operation Grange to cover up the true facts about what REALLY happened to Madeleine McCann - and ORDER a remit which said: "only investigate the abduction theory'.

To repeat the refrain of the crowd: SHAME ON YOU, British Police.

This large crowd had gathered to support anti-grooming gangs campaigner Tommy Robinson, who was being prosecuted today for 'contempt of court' for filming outside the court when several grooming gang members were on trial:

Madeleine McCann and the Strange Story of the two Crimewatch E-fits

by Gemma Fairweather, October 2014

              Image A                    Image B

 A. Introduction

My article would be a very long one if I went into all the background and all the issues involved behind the unveiling, on the BBC CrimeWatch Special of 14 October 2013, of these two e-fits, allegedly of the man who is now the chief suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

So my introduction will be brief, and what follows will be little more than a series of notes and questions. My aim is to introduce this complex subject to the many people not aware of the many intricacies of the Madeleine McCann case. I want to give the context in which those two images were unveiled on CrimeWatch.

These two images were first revealed to 6.7 million viewers of BBC CrimeWatch in October last year (2013), and around the same time they were published in all Britain’s mainstream print and TV media. They were presented as the face of the new suspect.

We were meant to believe that this new suspect had been seen by members of an Irish family at around 10.00pm on 3 May 2007, the night Madeleine was reported missing. As you will see from what follows, I believe those millions of viewers were seriously and deliberately misled - by one of the country’s top police officers.

B. The ‘sighting’ by Jane Tanner

Up to the very moment of this broadcast, the entire world had been looking for an entirely different suspect - this man:

This was a sketch made by Melisa Little, on behalf of the McCann Team, of the man said to have been seen by Jane Tanner - one of the McCanns’ close friends - at around 9.15pm the night Madeleine was reported missing.

For nearly six-and-a-half years, this man, if he ever existed, was the No. 1 suspect.

I say ‘if he ever existed’ because there were numerous serious problems with this claimed sighting. Here are just a few of them:

She reported her claimed sighting to her partner, Russell O’Brien. He then wrote out a timeline of the evening’s events, placing this sighting at 9.15pm or 9.20pm. Yet Jane Tanner claimed that she did not tell the McCanns or their other friends about her sighting because she thought it would ‘upset them’. This is barely credible, especially when you consider that her partner, Russell O’Brien, wrote down details of her claimed sighting on the ripped-off cover of an Activity Sticker Book belonging to Madeleine. The McCanns themselves must have given O’Brien that sticker book

As time went on, Jane Tanner’s recollections about what she claimed she had seen kept getting more detailed - contrary to how memory normally operates

She kept changing her story about how far away she was away from the man she claimed to have seen

Immediately before her sighting, she claimed to have walked right past Gerry McCann and his friend Jez Wilkins. But neither of them remembers seeing her.

The Portuguese Police found her statements evasive - and believed from Day One that she had fabricated her sighting

Despite the apparent urgency of identifying this man, the McCann Team did not produce a sketch of this man until a full 5½ months after 3 May. It would be virtually useless after such a lapse of time.

The timings of Gerry McCann leaving his apartment (about 9.10pm) and Jane Tanner claiming to have seen the man carrying a child (9.15pm) meant that any abductor would have to achieve the impossible within the space of less than 5 minutes:

- enter the apartment without being seen or heard,

- find Madeleine in the dark,

- pick her up without waking her,

- have time to open both the window and shutters from the inside without being heard,

- and then escape the apartment, again without being seen by anyone except Jane Tanner.

It was never a credible story.

A. How the Metropolitan Police say they found ‘Tannerman’

Now, the only reason we were told on BBC CrimeWatch to look for the man seen by the Irish family is because DCI Andy Redwood, the Head of Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange - the name of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann -, told us in that broadcast that after 6½ years of looking for the man that Jane Tanner said she’s seen (often called ‘Tannerman’), we should immediately stop doing so.

Why?

Because DCI Redwood said he’d found him!

For DCI Redwood, this was ‘a revelation moment’, something ‘interesting’ and ‘exciting’, as he breathlessly told his viewers.

A man had come forward - after 6½ years, so DCI Redwood told us - to say that he was probably the man seen by Jane Tanner.

Of course, DCI Redwood didn’t do anything simple like tell us who this person was, a man who had apparently only just realised he was the very man that police forces and the public around the world had been looking for, for all this time.

Here is how DCI Redwood, and presenter Matthew Amroliwala on BBC CrimeWatch, described the man who had apparently come forward (the full transcript is in an appendix to this article)::

Redwood: “One of the things that we picked up very quickly was the fact that there was a night crèche that was operating from the main Ocean Club reception - and 8 families had left 11 children in there, and one particular family we spoke to gave us information…they themselves believed that they could be the ‘Tanner sighting’.”

Amroliwala: “The British father had collected his 2-year-old daughter from the crèche. He had been walking near the McCanns’ apartment. This is the actual photograph taken by Metropolitan Police officers of the man, dressed in the kind of clothes he wore on holiday. This image was compared to the artist’s impression” [what was alleged to be a photo of the alleged ‘man from the creche’ was shown to viewers, alongside the artist’s impression of Tannerman. They did look very similar].

Redwood: “It is uncannily similar, and we know that the pyjamas their child was wearing, that it is, again, uncannily striking, the similarity”.

The sudden revelation that ‘Tannerman’ might not be the abductor after all raised a number of important questions.

B. Exactly who was this man (‘Crecheman’) that ‘came forward’ and said it was him who saw a man carrying sa child at 9.15pm on 3 May 2007?

The question that occurred to most people was: Why, if this man had indeed been walking back from the creche past the McCanns’ apartment at around 9.15pm, had he not bothered to come forward for 6 years?

But there were other questions.

It was soon noted by a number of Madeleine McCann researchers that if the man had been walking south-eastwards past the McCanns’ apartment, as claimed by Jane Tanner, then he could not have been taking the shortest route back to wherever he was staying (a map is necessary to fully illustrate this point).

Then there were question marks about the family involved.

Redwood and Amroliwala, in the CrimeWatch programme, made these references to the family (see also appendix):

· 8 families had left 11 children in [the creche]

· and one particular family we spoke to

· having discussed with them

· what they were doing on the night

· they themselves believed

· that they could be the ‘Tanner sighting’.

You can see for yourself that three times above, Redwood & Amroliwala use the word ‘they’. In addition, they refer twice to ‘the family’, and once to ‘them’.

So it is clear that they are talking about a couple - man and wife, or man and partner and child.

Now, if ‘they’, the parents, had put their child in the crèche, say whilst they had gone out for a meal, why would the man be…

· on his own

· without a buggy

· carrying a child dressed only in pyjamas?

This doesn’t make sense, does it? Where is the mother in this story which was put forward by Redwood & Amroliwala to 6.7 million trusting CrimeWatch viewers?

Is it credible that this man who had apparently left his two-year-old in the crèche would have done so without (a) having some sort of buggy or pushchair and (b) without having warmer clothing for carrying home his child on what we know was a cold early May night in Portugal? ;l

I invite you to share with me my view that there is very good reason to doubt whether this man - suddenly ‘found’ after more than six years - ever existed. Would it not be a lot more credible had DCI Redwood actually named him?).

C. The claimed ‘sighting’ by the Irish family: The basic facts  

Anyway, this device of ‘finding’ (or, as I suggest, inventing) Crecheman enabled DCI Redwood to identify, as his new chief suspect, a man said to have been seen by the Smith family, from Drogheda, Ireland.

It’s to this alleged sighting that I now wish to turn.

The brief facts about this claimed sighting are these:

1. Martin Smith, his wife and his two children Peter aged 29 and Aoife, 12, and five other family members were holidaying in the apartment the family owned in Praia da Luz, on the day Madeleine was reported missing.

2. Martin Smith knew local man (and the first suspect in the case) Robert Murat. The two had met, according to the Smiths themselves, ‘on several occasions’.  

3. The Smiths later claimed they saw a man carrying a child at around 10.00pm on the night Madeleine went missing, somewhere between the Ocean Club, where the McCanns were having dinner that night, and the beach.

4. But none of them did anything about this until two weeks later.

5. The day after Robert Murat was made a suspect (15 May 2007), Martin Smith’s son Peter is said (by Martin & Peter Smith) to have ‘phoned his father and asked if his father remembered seeing a man carrying a child on 3 May.

6. This is what Martin Smith said on the record about this telephone call: “We were home two weeks [actually 13 days] when my son rang up and asked was he dreaming or did we meet a man carrying a child the night Madeleine was taken. We all remembered that we had the same recollection. I felt we should report it to the police". They then reported their sighting to the Irish Gardai on 16 May

7. Martin Smith, Peter and Aoife flew to Portugal and on 26 May made formal statements to the Portuguese about what they claimed to have seen. They all said or admitted the following:

· it was dark

· the street lighting was poor

· they only saw the man for a few seconds, and

· they would not be able to recognise him again if they saw him.

8. In addition, there are contradictions in what they have said about this man and the child, which I deal with below.

9. On 9 September, four months after Madeleine was reported missing, Martin Smith says he was watching TV news footage of the McCanns walking down the steps of a plane, each carrying one of their children, as they landed back in England.

10. On 20 September, 11 days later, he made an emotional statement to Detective Liam Hogan of the Irish Gardai claiming that he was ‘60% to 80% sure’, by the way Gerry McCann was carrying his son Sean, that he was the very man he had seen carrying a child on the evening of 3 May. Martin Smith’s claim has since been widely viewed by members of the public as wholly lacking in credibility.

11. At no time did the Portuguese police attempt to get the Smiths to draw up e-fits of the man they said they had seen.

12. On 3 January, a series of newspaper stories in the British press reported that Martin Smith had been approached by Brian Kennedy, a senior member of the McCann Team who was conducting so-called ‘private investigations’ for the McCanns into Madeleine’s disappearance. Kennedy had appointed the controversial Spanish detective agency Metodo 3 as part of his investigation team. Martin Smith said that Metodo 3 detectives wanted to see him.

13. In an article in the Evening Standard in August 2009, Mark Hollingsworth alleged that men employed by Brian Kennedy, in his private Madeleine McCann investigation, had intimidated some witnesses in the case so severely that they now refused to give evidence.

14. We know from a number of published sources that a member, or members, of Kennedy’s investigation team met the Smiths at least once during 2008. Neither the McCanns nor Brian Kennedy nor the Smiths have supplied any details of when and why these meetings took place.

15. At this time, Kennedy was employing a team of investigators from a one-man-band company, Oakley International (‘Oakley’), formed after Madeleine McCann was reported missing. Oakley’s sole Director was Kevin Halligen, a man who, after working for the McCanns for a fee of £½ million plus expenses, went on the run from police, wanted for a number of major frauds. He was arrested in 2009, and spent four years in Belmarsh top security prison and a U.S. jail for his crimes, eventually being released in early 2013.

16. Halligen’s main assistant at this time was Henri Exton, formerly the Head of Covert Intelligence for MI5. He was later sacked by MI5 after being charged by Greater Manchester Police for stealing a bottle of perfume from a shop at Manchester Airport.

17. According to an article in the Sunday Times on 27 October 2013, Exton had produced the two e-fits shown by DCI Redwood of Operation Grange on 14 October. He claimed to have produced them in 2008. He alleged that the McCanns had ‘suppressed’ them, an allegation strongly denied by the McCanns [ NOTE: In September this year (2014) it was announced that the Sunday Times had paid the McCanns £55,000 compensation for their alleged libel ].

18. On the BBC CrimeWatch McCann Special in October 2013, both DCI Andy Redwood and CrimeWatch presenter Matthew Amroliwala intended viewers to believe that the Irish family (the Smiths) drew up these e-fits. But after referring to the family, the chosen words used by presenter Amroliwala were that the e-fits had been drawn up ‘by two of the witnesses‘, not (which he could easily have said) ‘by two members of the Irish family’. Many have asked why he did not use those words, but instead used the ambiguous phrase: ‘two of the witnesses’.

19. The Metropolitan Police have admitted on the record that they interviewed Martin Smith ‘once in 2012’ and ‘once in 2013’. This would tend to suggest that Martin Smith has co-operated with DCI Redwood’s attempt to claim that these e-fits are probably of the person who abducted Madeleine - and to pass them off as having been made up from the Smiths’ recollections. But of course neither DCI Andy Redwood nor Martin Smith will say what was discussed at these two meetings.

I am now ready to begin my analysis of the puzzles and contradictions surrounding these e-fits and the alleged sighting by the Smiths.    

D. Why we can’t accept what DCI Redwood told us about the two e-fits?

1. He maintained that the two e-fits were of ‘the same man’. But most people think the images are clearly of two different men.

2. If you compare the man pictured in Image A with the one pictured in Image B, the man in Image A:

· looks older

· has a ‘fatter’ face

· has a rectangular face (Image B man has a triangular-shaped face)

· has curly hair, apparently brushed back  

· has a much shorter nose

· has a much bigger chin, and

· has smaller ears.

3. On the CrimeWatch programme, the presenter did not explicitly say that the images were drawn up by the Irish family.

4. DCI Redwood has not, and cannot adequately explain why these e-fits were first produced five years previously (2008), but never used.

5. It would have been impossible for any of the Smiths to have drawn up either of these two images, for these reasons:

(a) as we saw above, each of the three members of the Smith family, when interviewed by the Portuguese police, admitted that:

· it was dark

· the street lighting was poor

· they only saw the man for a few seconds

· they would not be able to recognise him again if they saw him, and

(b) according to the limited information we have, if the Smiths did indeed draw up these two e-fits, they probably did so sometime between May and October 2008, which would have been 12 to 17 months after they say they saw the man - far too long after the event to be able to produce a valid e-fit, as police procedures accept and acknowledge.

E. Contradictions about the ‘Smithman sighting’ - No. 1:   The Smiths’ different stated reasons for their delay inReporting their claimed sighting

REASON 1: My son ’phoned me up two weeks after we got back and asked “Am I dreaming, or did we meet a man carrying a child…?”

Statement given to Irish newspapers:

[ NOTE: The probable date of Peter Smith’s ‘phone call to his father (if it happened at all) was 16 May, but could have been 17 or 18 May ]:

Martin Smith is quoted as saying: “We were home two weeks when my son rang up and asked was he dreaming or did we meet a man carrying a child the night Madeleine was taken. We all remembered that we had the same recollection. I felt we should report it to the police".

3 January 2008, Daily Mail:

“Initially the Smith family thought nothing more of the encounter - and even the next day when the story broke they still didn't make the connection. ‘We were home two weeks when my son rang me up and asked was he dreaming or did we meet a man carrying a child the night Madeleine was taken? We all remembered the same recollection, and I felt we should report it to the police’, said Mr Smith”.

‘We only remembered him after coming home’, Drogheda Independent, 9 January 2008:

Peter Smith also told the Drogheda Independent: “…it was only after we were home two weeks that I remembered seeing him. At the time my attention was focused on looking after my wife. When I mentioned it, it jogged my father's memory and he too remembered seeing the same man’. Peter Smith added. ‘We knew that what we had seen was so vague that we couldn't identify the guy’.”

‘If only we’d remembered the next day’, Daily Mail, 3 January 2008

Martin Smith: “We've all been beating ourselves up that we should have made the link sooner, if only we'd remembered the next day. But the Portuguese police said you see these things on holiday all the time” [ NOTE: When did the Portuguese police ever say that to him? - we have no details ].

REASON 2: On 4 May ‘I thought it could have been Madeleine’

Statement made to PJ:

“He only became aware of Madeleine’s disappearance ‘the next morning’, from his daughter in Ireland. She had sent him a message or called him regarding what had happened. At this point he thought that Madeleine could have been the child he saw with the individual”.

REASON 3: ‘We only reported our sighting because we eventually found out about the exact time of the sighting’

Peter Smith: It was the coincidence of the time

Peter Smith’s statement: “Urged, states that when he passed this individual it would have been around 21H55/22H00, and at the time he was completely unaware that a child had disappeared. He only found out about the disappearance of the child the next morning through someone he knew, the son of the builder of Estrela da Luz, who was also at the airport. The witness went to the airport given that, as planned, he intended to return to Ireland on that day

— At that time he did not associate the said individual with the disappearance, only after thinking on the subject and the coincidence of the time did he infer that MADELEINE could have been the child carried by the individual that he had seen.

We found out the exact time Madeleine disappeared

Drogheda Independent, 8 August 2007 – article based on interview with ‘a family member - possibly Peter Smith: “They returned to Ireland the next day, and because the reported abduction times didn't originally match, they never had cause to examine their journey that night.

“As it emerged that Madeleine was abducted around the same time, one of the family members [Peter Smith – see above] had a flashback of the moment some time later and encouraged the others to jog their memory”.

“They remembered passing a man walking towards the beach with a child in his arms.

Other than his approximate height and the fact that he was wearing beige clothes they cannot be more specific than that. 'We are annoyed at how vague our description is’, said the family member.

Sun, 3 January 2008: The time of Maddie’s abduction was revealed

“The Smiths were leaving Kelly's Bar…between 9.50 and 10pm on May 3 last year.

“They flew home to Ireland the next day, but when the times of Maddie's abduction were revealed, the family remembered seeing a man, 5ft 7in to 5ft 9in tall and dressed in beige, carrying the child. Significantly the description matches that given by Jane Tanner, 37, a friend of the McCanns.

REASON 4: The descriptions matched

The description was similar to Tanner’s; Daily Mail, 3 January 2008

“Their description of the barefoot child and the man, who wore beige trousers, echoes that of Miss Tanner…Though the Smith family believe they met an almost identical man closer to 10pm, the coincidence prompted them to contact police after they returned to Ireland. Mr Smith said: ‘Luz is such a small place and so quiet, we felt a duty to tell the police and let them decide if it was important’."

REASON 5. ‘The Portuguese police were too busy’

[ NOTE: This story appeared in the Daily Mirror on 16 October 2013, two days after the BBC CrimeWatch McCann Special. It had the hallmarks of a story facilitated by the McCann Team. It included several quotes from Martin Smith ]:

“A key witness in the Madeleine McCann case claimed yesterday that Portuguese police failed to take his evidence seriously.

“Retired businessman Martin Smith, 64, provided details for an e-fit of the prime suspect after spotting the mystery man carrying a child at 10pm close to where the three-year-old vanished more than six years ago”

“But he said his information was virtually ignored by local officers because they were too busy chasing up another sighting of a man near Kate and Gerry McCann’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz 45 minutes earlier”.

“Scotland Yard detectives reinvestigating the case after six years have now established that the suspect Portuguese police were so keen to trace - spotted by holidaymaker Jane Tanner at 9.20pm - was just an innocent British tourist returning with his own child from a crèche”.

[ NOTES: 1. This is the first time that Martin Smith has ever claimed that he had contacted the Portuguese police and that they ‘failed to take his evidence seriously’

2. The way the article reads totally misleads readers by suggesting that the Portuguese police took details for an e-fit, yet went on to ignore this

3. It is also misleading in suggesting that the police were ‘too busy chasing up the sighting of another man, ‘Tannerman’. In fact (a) the police were suspicious of Tanner’s claimed ‘sighting’ from Day One, and (b) as we know from Dr Goncalo Amaral’s book, he did take the Smiths’ sighting seriously ]

H. Contradictions about the ‘Smithman sighting’ - No. 2: We  didn’t think anything of it’, or a ‘disturbing encounter’?

1. Mary Smith: We didn’t think anything of it’

In the Sun, 3 January 2008, Mary Smith is asked about the claimed ‘sighting’ and says “We didn’t think anything of it”.

2. Mary Smith approached the man

In the Daily Mail, 3 January 2008, Smith claims that, without warning, she approached the man with the question: ‘Oh, is she asleep?’ He is said to have ignored her. [ NOTE: Mary Smith never made a formal statement to the police, so far as we know ]

3. Martin Smith said it was a ‘disturbing encounter’

In the same Daily Mail article, 3 January 2008, Martin Smith is quoted as saying that “It was a disturbing encounter”.

4. 'Very unusual'

In the same Daily Mail report, 3 January 2008, we read:

“AN IRISH holidaymaker has spoken publicly for the first time of his disturbing encounter with a man carrying a child wrapped in a blanket on the night Madeleine McCann disappeared.

“…the sighting…is strikingly similar to one by a friend of the McCanns, Jane Tanner. In hindsight, the retired Mr Smith said, the man’s rude behaviour should have aroused his suspicions.

“Martin Smith said: ‘The one thing we noted afterwards was that he gave us no greeting. My wife Mary remembered afterwards that she asked him: 'Oh, is she asleep?' But he never acknowledged her one way or another. He just put his head down and averted his eyes. This is very unusual in a tourist town at such a quiet time of the year".

5 . Madeleine's disappearance 'had a terrible effect on the children'

Again from the Daily Mail, 3 January 2008: “Mr Smith said it was some time before the family realised they could be star witnesses: ‘We were out the night it happened…We went home about 9.50pm and we heard nothing at all about Madeleine McCann until the next day. I was taking my son Peter to the airport and on my way back, I heard that a kidnapping had happened in the village of Luz”.

"We were looking at all the commotion on Sky News and we really felt quite helpless. We had two grandchildren with us at the time, aged four and five, and it had a terrible effect on them. They all wanted to sleep in the same room as us until we went home on the Wednesday”

[ NOTE: Despite this ‘terrible effect’, the Smiths did nothing until 16-18 May, 13 to 15 days later ]

I. Contradictions about the ‘Smithman sighting’ - No. 3: The man lowered his head – or didn’t lower his head?

1. He didn’t lower his head - Peter Smith:

From Peter Smith’s statement: down: Quote: “…he did not try to hide his face nor did he lower his gaze”.]

2. He did lower his head: - Martin Smith:

From Martin Smith’s statement: “He put his head down…”

J.  Contradictions about the ‘Smithman sighting’ - No. 4:   How did Martin Smith find out about Madeleine’s kidnapping?

1. From my daughter In Ireland

Quote from news article: “He only became aware of Madeleine’s disappearance ‘the next morning’, from his daughter in Ireland. She had sent him a message or called him regarding what had happened. At this point he thought that Madeleine could have been the child he saw with the individual”.

2. Someone at the airport told Peter Smith

QUOTE: “He didn’t find out about Madeleine’s disappearance until the morning of 4 May through someone he knew, the son of the builder of Estrela da Luz, who was also at the airport, as he (Peter Smith) was waiting for his return flight to Ireland”.]

[ NOTE: Yet there had been police sirens heard in the village before 11pm on the night Madeleine was reported missing - and by the early morning of 4 May, Praia da Luz was crawling with police and villagers looking for Madeleine ]

K.  Contradictions about the ‘Smithman sighting’ - No. 5:  Was the child covered with a blanket - or not?

In the Daily Mail report, 3 January 2008, we read:

“AN IRISH holidaymaker has spoken publicly for the first time of his disturbing encounter with a man carrying a child wrapped in a blanket on the night Madeleine McCann disappeared”.

Yet the Smiths in their statements to the Portuguese police say the child was dressed only in pyjamas and was not covered by a blanket.

L. Contradictions about the ‘Smithman sighting’ - No.6:   How often had Martin Smith met Robert Murat?

1. Twice, in May and August 2006

From Martin Smith’s statement:

— Adds that in May and August of 2006, he saw ROBERT MURAT in Praia da Luz bars. On one of these occasions, the first, he was inebriated and spoke to everyone. He did not wear glasses at that time. He also states that the individual who carried the child was not ROBERT. He would have recognised him immediately.

2. Met him ‘only once’ – two years ago

Drogheda Independent - 8 August 2007

“The family contacted the Portuguese police and flew back over to give evidence.

However, contrary to media reports, Mr Smith had not seen chief suspect Robert Murat in a bar the evening that Madeleine was abducted. 'He definitely didn't see him on the night in question,' said a family member.

“The family are also mystified at reports that he knows Mr Murat. 'They met once in a bar about two years ago. My Dad would only knows Mr Murat by sight,' said the family member. 'However, from what he knows, he can say that the man who was carrying the child was not Robert Murat”.

3. ‘Met him several times’

SKY News, 4 January 2008

“An Irish tourist who saw someone carrying a child in a blanket on the night Madeleine McCann disappeared insists that the mystery man was not Robert Murat… Mr Smith is certain that the man he and his family saw that night was not Robert Murat, who is still officially an ‘arguido’ in the Madeleine McCann investigation.

“Martin Smith said: ‘I told police it was definitely not him because the man wasn't as big as Murat - I think I would have recognised him because I'd met him several times previously”.

4. ‘I’ve known him for years’

From the Daily Mail, 3 January 2008: “Insisting he knew chief suspect Robert Murat visually for years, Mr Smith told police the person he saw carrying a child could not be him”.

M. Descriptions of the man they claimed to have seen, from their own statements

I am adding here all the specific things that each of the three Smith family members said about the man they claimed to have seen.

We already have all the following problems about believing whether any of the Smiths could possibly have drawn up either of the two e-fits of what look like (to many people) two quite different people:

1. It was dark

2. The street lighting was week

3. They only saw him for a few seconds at the most

4. None of them said they would be able to recognize him again

5. The e-fits appear to have been drawn up between May and October 2008 - from 12 to 17 months after the event - far too late to draw up a valid e-fit, let alone two e-fits of what look to most people like two different men,

Here are the relevant extracts from their statements:

Aoife Smith, 26 May 2007

The individual was male, Caucasian, light-skinned, between 20/30 years of age, of normal physical build, around 1,70/1,75 metres in height. At the time she saw his face but now cannot remember it. She thinks that he had a clean-shaven face. She does not remember seeing tattoos, scars or earrings. She did not notice his ears. His hair was thick-ish, light brown in colour, short at the back (normal) and a bit longer on the top.

— His trousers were smooth "rights" along the legs, beige in colour, cotton fabric, thicker than linen, possibly with buttons, and without any other decoration.

— She did not see what he was wearing above his trousers as the child covered him almost completely at the top.

— She did not see what shoes he was wearing.

— The individual's gait was normal, between a fast walk and a run. He did not look tired, moving in a manner usual when one carries a child.

Peter Smith, 26 May 2007

The description of the individual who carried the child was: Caucasian, around 175 to 180 cm tall. About 35 years, or older. He was somewhat tanned as a result of sun exposure. Average build, in good shape. Short hair, brown in colour. He does not remember if he wore glasses, or had a beard or a moustache. He did not notice any other relevant details as the lighting was bad.

— He also does not remember the clothing the individual wore or his shoes. He states that he did not notice those details as his pregnant wife was somewhat ill and he was constantly attending to her, not caring about observation of the individual.

He states that [the man] carried the child on his arms, with the head resting on the left shoulder, as such on the right of the deponent, appearing to him in a natural manner.

Drogheda Independent, 9 January 2008

Quote: [Peter Smith] went on: ‘We knew that what we had seen was so vague that we couldn't identify the guy’.”

Martin Smith, 26 May 2007

Regarding the description of the individual who carried the child he states that: he was Caucasian, around 175 to 180m in height. He appeared to be about 35/40 years old. He had an average build, a bit on the thin side. His hair was short, in a basic male cut, brown in colour. He cannot state if it was dark or lighter in tone. He did not wear glasses and had no beard or moustache. He did not notice any other relevant details partly due to the fact that the lighting was not very good.

— He was wearing cream or beige-coloured cloth trousers in a classic cut. He did not see his shoes. He did not notice the body clothing and cannot describe the colour or fashion of the same.

Urged, he states that the individual did not appear to be a tourist. He cannot explain this further. It was simply his perception given the individual's clothing. He states that the individual carried the child in his arms, with her head laying on the individual's left shoulder, that being to the right of the deponent. He adds that he did not hold the child in a comfortable position, suggesting [the carrying] not being habitual.

Questioned, says that the individual did not speak nor did the child as she was in a deep sleep.

— States that it is not possible for him to recognise the individual in person or by photograph.

N. Contradictions about the ‘Smithman sighting’ - No. 6:   Martin Smith’s improving memory

But now let’s look at the further statement made by Martin Smith in January 2008

This further statement followed Martin Smith’s claim in September 2007 that he thought he recognised Gerry McCann as the man he had seen at around 10.00pm on the evening of 3 May 2007. His unconvincing explanation for that was that he recognised who it was ‘by the way Gerry McCann was carrying his son Sean’ [on his shoulder].

Four months later, on or just before 30 January 2008, an officer of the Irish Gardai, Liam Hogan, took a statement from Martin Smith. Here are extracts from a summary of Martin Smith’s description of the man’s clothing given in January:

The man “was wearing beige trousers and darkish top, maybe a jacket or blazer”.

But in May 2007, just three weeks after his claimed sighting, Martin Smith clearly tells the Portuguese police that “He did not notice the body clothing and cannot describe the colour or fashion of the same”.

Similarly, Aiofe Smith told police in May 2007 that “She did not see what he was wearing above his trousers, as the child covered him almost completely at the top...”

Furthermore, Peter Smith’s evidence in May 2007 was that “He also does not remember the clothing the individual wore, or his shoes”.

Neither Martin Smith nor his two children, in May 2007, could remember a thing about what the man was wearing above his waist. So we are entitled at least to ask, how could Martin Smith be so sure, over eight months later, that the man he said he had seen was wearing ‘a darkish top, maybe a jacket or blazer’?

Why was he unable to describe, three weeks after the event, what the man had been wearing, yet very nearly nine months after the night Madeleine was reported missing, he could apparently tell the Irish police that he was ‘wearing a darkish top’?  

O. Contradictions about the ‘Smithman sighting’ - No. 7: Could the witnesses see the child’s eyes? - or not?

Yet another contradiction emerges when we look at what the three Smith family members say about the eyes of the child they saw they saw. The following are all extracts from the statements of the three family members taken by the Portuguese police on 26 May:  

Aoife Smith says:

“...she didn’t see the child's face because she was lying vertically against the man’s left shoulder…”

Peter Smith says:

“The girl was asleep; her eyelids were closed”

[ NOTE: How could Peter Smith possibly see that the girl’s eyelids were closed when Aoife says very clearly “I didn’t see the child’s face because she was lying vertically against the man’s left shoulder…” ]

Martin Smith says:

“He says that the man didn’t speak, nor did the child as she was ‘in a deep sleep’.”

How exactly could Martin Smith say that she was asleep if Aoife, his daughter, reports that the child’s face ‘was lying vertically against the man’s left shoulder’? Moreover, based on the few seconds that he saw this man in the dark, what makes him claim the child was in a ‘deep’ sleep? How can he possible know that?

P. The strange and striking similarity of the two sightings: Tannerman and Smithman

One of the strangest aspects of the ‘Smithman’ sighting is how remarkably similar it was to the description given by Jane Tanner of the man she said she had seen. Here is a list of them:

In both ‘sightings’, this was an unaccompanied male, carrying a child and having no buggy or push-chair.

In both ‘sightings’, the child was described as ‘a girl’, ‘barefoot’, ‘wearing light-coloured/pink pyjamas’, and ’looking about four years old’.

In both ‘sightings’, the child was described as ‘being held on the man’s left side’ and ‘having no blanket or other covering

In both ‘sightings’, the man ‘did not look like a tourist’ (whatever that may mean), was ‘wearing a dark jacket’ and ‘light-coloured trousers’, was ‘about 1.75m to 1.8m tall (5’ 9” - 5’ 10”)’, ‘aged 25-40’, and ‘of average build’.

In both ‘sightings’, the man was described as ‘walking ‘purposefully’/quite fast, the two sightings were within 600 yards of each other, and in neither case could the man’s face be seen properly (despite claims that the Smiths drew up the two e-fits).

We need to consider what can account for these remarkable similarities. Here are the main possibilities:

a) It was the same man wandering around Praia da Luz for 45 minutes carrying a 4-year-old dressed only in pyjamas on a cold night

b) Two different unaccompanied men without a buggy or pushchair, who looked nearly identical, were both carrying a child of about four years of age around dressed only in pyjamas, or

c) The Smiths saw no-one, but invented their sighting by copying the details of the ‘Tannerman’ sighting - which they may well already have learnt by the time they made their statements on 26 May, possibly (as we saw above) with the intention of giving extra credibility to the sighting of Jane Tanner, but at the same time emphasising that the man was not Robert Murat.  

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well, that concludes my little look at those mysterious two e-fits and at the multiple puzzles and contradictions in the Smiths’ accounts of events.

I suggest that looking again in detail at what the three Smith family members say about the man they say they saw gives us no confidence whatsoever that they could have drawn up those two-fits.

The appendix covering what was said on the BBC CrimeWatch Special by DCI Andy Redwood and presenter Matthew Amroliwala about the ‘Smithman sighting’ is below.

Written for the blog ‘What Happened to Madeleine McCann?’, October 2014

____________________

APPENDIX

HOW THE MET POLICE AND THE BBC PRESENTED THE DISCOVERY THAT TANNERMAN WAS CRECHEMAN

Transcript of excerpt from CrimeWatch, 14 October 2013

AR: DCI Andy Redwood, Operation Grange, Metropolitan Police

MA: Matthew Amroliwala, BBC CrimeWatch presenter

Taken from: ‘Crimewatch UK - October 2013 Madeleine McCann Special’

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ8jmdWlB8Y

[extracts starts at 20 min 55 secs, finishes 23 min 40 secs]

AR: The careful and critical analysis of the timeline has been absolutely key.

Primarily, we’re focused on the area between 8.30 and 10.

We know that at 8.30, that was the time that Mr & Mrs McCann went down to the Tapas area for their dinner and we know that at around 10pm, that was when Mrs McCann found that Madeleine was missing

MA: One of the most pivotal events on the timeline was Jane Tanner’s sighting of a man carrying a child. He was walking in this spot [picture shown of Matthew Amroliwala around the Escola Primaria and the Rua 25 de Abril, Praia da Luz], just metres from where Madleeine had been sleeping [picture of Matthew Amroliwala outside the M Canns’ apartment]. This man was widely thought to be Madeleine’s abductor.

But the team was taking nothing for granted.

AR: One of the things that we picked up very quickly was the fact that there was a night crèche that was operating from the main Ocean Club reception and 8 families had left 11 children in there, and one particular family we spoke to gave us information that was really interesting and exciting.

In fact, I would say it was, it was a ‘revelation moment’, when, having discussed with them what they were doing on the night, they themselves believed that they could be the ‘Tanner sighting’.

MA: The British father had collected his 2-year-old daughter from the crèche. He had been walking near the McCanns’ apartment.

This is the actual photograph taken by Metropolitan Police officers of the man, dressed in the kind of clothes he wore on holiday [picture shown of man dressed in a dark blue jacket and light grey trousers. His face was blurred. His arms are shown projecting forward, as if carrying a child on his arms]. This image was compared to the artist’s impression [above -the one drawn by Melissa Little for the McCann Team].

AR: It is uncannily similar, and we know that the pyjamas their child was wearing, that it is, again, uncannily striking, the similarity.

MA: So what you’re saying is that the timeline everyone was working on for years in this case, was wrong?

AR: We’re almost certain now that this sighting is not the abductor. But very importantly, what it says, is that from 9.15, we’re able to allow the clock to continue to move forward [the sound of a clock ticking is heard], and in doing so, things that have not been quite as significant or received quite the same degree of attention are now the centre of our focus.

MA: This was an enormous discovery for the team, with an innocent explanation for the suspect who’d been at the centre of the case for years.

Their attention quickly turned to another sighting, which could now be the key to the entire mystery.

It was here [picture shown of Matthew Amroliwala around the Escola Primaria and the Rua 25 de Abril, Praia da Luz] at 10pm, that an Irish family witnessed another man carrying child. They saw him come down the hill from the direction of the Ocean Club, headed in that way [he points] towards the beach. Could this have been Madeleine and her abductor?

A biography of Hamish Campbell, the man chosen to head Operation Grange

This article was first written by Tony Bennett on 28 April 2014. It was revised and updated by MMRG on 17 May 2019. Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell was the officer who decided (no doubt with orders from above) that the Metropolitan Police's Operation Grange should only investigate Madeleine's abduction, but NOT investigate any role her parents may have played in her abduction. 

Hamish Campbell was also the Investigating Officer in the Jill Dando murder case. He was mainly responsible for putting an innocent man, Barry Bulsara/Barry George, in prison for her murder, for 8 years - MMRG.     

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

PART ONE 

A biography of Hamish Campbell, the man chosen to head Operation Grange

by Tony Bennett, 28 April 2014

Introduction

This article is an examination of the man chosen as the Senior Investigating Officer for Operation Grange, the review of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Its remit was eventually prised out of the Metropolitan Police by means of a Freedom of a Freedom of Information Act question. It was:

“To examine the [disappearance of Madeleine McCann] and seek to determine (as if the abduction occurred in the UK) what additional, new investigative approaches we would take and which can assist the Portuguese authorities in progressing the matter….The ‘investigative review’ will be conducted with transparency, openness and thoroughness”.

Although when the investigation had been archived in Portugal two main alternatives were suggested - either abduction, or the hiding of Madeleine’s body by her parents - those who set up Operation Grange were clear. From the Prime Minister to the Home Secretary to the then head of the Met, Sir Paul Stephenson, abduction was the only hypothesis to be investigated. The review, as the Prime Minister’s spokesman clarified, was ‘to help the family’  (the McCanns).

Every police investigation or review of a serious crime has an investigation co-ordinator, known as the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), and a deputy, called the Investigating Officer (IO). The role of the SIO is to set an investigation strategy and to decide and obtain the resources he needs to do  the work required – in this case, a review. The job of the IO is basically to carry out the agreed strategy and to direct operations.

Sir Paul Stephenson decided to appoint one Hamish Campbell as the SIO, with an additional requirement for the SIO to present his report to one Simon Foy. Andy Redwood, a Detective Chief Inspector, was appointed as the IO. Before long, Campbell and Redwood determined that they would need a staff of around 35 to 40 to carry out the review.

The main purpose of this article is to look at the background history and connections of Hamish Campbell.   


The murder of Jill Dando


Seven years ago, on 28 April 2007, the McCanns set off from East Midlands Airport for their ill-fated holiday in the Portuguese Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.

It was also on 28 April, 15 years ago, in 1999, that TV Crimewatch presenter Jill Dando was shot dead at point-blank range in a killing that had all the hallmarks of a professional contract killing.

Two individuals connected with the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann were also connected with the investigation into the murder of Jill Dando.

They are:

Clarence Mitchell - who was at the time working for the BBC as their senior crime reporter. He was apparently the very first reporter at the scene of the crime, and covered the investigation into Jill Dando’s murder in the months following her death

Hamish Campbell - who was the investigation’s IO - placed in charge of the day-to-day investigation into Jill Dando’s murder in 1999. He was primarily responsible for the arrest and charging of Barry Bulsara, known also as ‘Barry George’, with the murder of Dando. Bulsara was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering Jill Dando but subsequently acquitted, seven years later, on appeal.

Years later…

Clarence Mitchell, three days after Madeleine McCann was reported missing, was asked by then Prime Minister Tony Blair to cease his full-time job as Head of the Media Monitoring Unit and work full-time on public relations and reputation management for the McCanns

and

Hamish Campbell was appointed in May 2011 as the SIO for Operation Grange, the review - now re-investigation - into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann being conducted by Scotland Yard.

This article will also examine aspects of the background of Ian Horrocks, the ex-detective, hailed as one of Britain’s foremost investigators, who was sent out to the Algarve by Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper in February 2012 and delivered reports to the Sun and SKY NEWS backing the McCanns’ abduction claims and heavily criticising the Portuguese police.

The Jill Dando investigation was run out of Belgravia Police Station, London. So is Operation Grange.

Here are some basic facts about the ill-fated investigation into Jill Dando’s death, led by Hamish Campbell:

A.   It was carried out at the time the McPherson report on the murder of Stephen Lawrence had been published. The Metropolitan Police was disgraced by that report. Scotland Yard’s reputation was in tatters.

B.   Barry Bulsara was wrongly convicted by a jury and served several years  in jail for an offence he didn’t commit.

C.   The only forensic evidence against him was a speck of firearms residue said to have been ‘found’ in his coat pocket.

D.  Cliff Richard, a friend of Jill Dando, was interviewed ‘a number of times’ by the police investigating Dando’s killing.

E.   No-one apart from Barry Bulsara has ever been charged with killing Jill Dando. Her killer, and anybody who may have hired the killer, remain at large.

F.   The main theory, put forward repeatedly by the police themselves and regularly in the mainstream media, is that a Serbian hit-man carried out the attack in revenge for NATO bombing the TV station in Belgrade.

G.  A second theory, with some circumstantial evidence to back it up, is that Dando was murdered by a hit-man on the instructions of career criminal and drugs lord Kenneth Noye.

H.  A third theory, with – as far as I am aware – no evidence to back it up, is that Dando had become aware of a high-level paedophile ring, and was killed by a hit-man acting on behalf of one of the country’s security forces.  


The Dando investigation and the role of Hamish Campbell


In November 1999, a detective named Brian Moore was promoted from the rank of Detective Superintendent (DS) to Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS). At the same time, he left a top secret and very corrupt intelligence unit, CIB3, known as ‘The Untouchables’. The corrupt nature of ‘The Untouchables’ is dealt with at length in a book of the same name by Michael Gillard and Laurie Flynn, published in late 2004, nearly 10 years ago. Michael Gillard has recently been at the centre of exposes in the national print media about extensive corruption at the heart of the Metropolitan Police Force. He has researched links between very senior officers in the Met, and a number of leading drugs lords.

Brian Moore’s first job in his new role as DCS was to take over the faltering investigation, codenamed ‘Operation Oxborough’, into the murder of Jill Dando. He became the investigation co-ordinator, or ‘Senior Investigating Officer’ (SIO), on 6 December 1999. By this time, Dando had been dead for over 7 months. In this respect, his role matched that of Dr Goncalo Amaral, who headed up and co-ordinated the initial investigation into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, before he was removed from the investigation less than four weeks after he had made the McCanns formal suspects in the disappearance of Madeleine.

Moore appointed Hamish Campbell as his day-to-day chief investigator, or ‘Investigating Officer’ (IO).

Prior to the appointment of Moore and Campbell to run the case, the investigation had found nothing of interest, despite over 7 months on the case. The Met had thousands of registered informants. Not one of them had come up with any information at all about who might have killed Jill Dando and why. A reward of £250,000 for information (about £½ million today)   had produced nothing. Operation Oxborough had interviewed in depth Dando’s family, friends, lovers (of whom there had been many) and colleagues. As Gillard and Flynn correctly observed in their book (p. 428), “The murder investigation was at an impasse”.

All that was to change once Moore and Campbell took over the investigation.

As an aside, there was a significant amount of at least low-level corruption at Belgravia Police Station at the time. Belgravia Police Station is close to Harrods, owned by Al-Fayed. Al-Fayed did favours for Begravia-based police officers. Police officers returned the favours. Indeed, there was already an anti-corruption investigation at that time into the so-called ‘Hamper Squad’, a group of Belgravia-based officers who would arrest and harass anyone, including his own employees, suspected of aiding and abetting his bitter business enemy, Lonrho tycoon ‘Tiny’ Rowland. The greedy officers had a continuous supply of free hampers and huge discounts on Harrods goods. Indeed, one honest officer, Bob Loftus, gave the anti-corruption unit the actual names of police officers who had accepted these bribes. No police officer, however, was ever prosecuted for these criminal offences.

At the time, Al-Fayed owned the now-defunct satirical magazine, Punch. Officers also leaked details of the Dando investigation to Punch, prompting a leak enquiry. 

By March 2000, the team of Moore-&-Campbell were homing in on Barry Bulsara, though quite why they did so is unclear. He was an obsessional and deluded loner, fascinated with himself, and lived in a pig-sty. There was no evidence that he was capable of carrying out a cold-blooded, professional killing, though he did have an interest in guns. Eleven days before the anniversary of Jill Dando’s death, Bulsara’s flat was searched, and a blue Cecil Gee overcoat was seized.

At the same time, mainstream media crime correspondents were briefed that the investigation had identified an obsessive loner as the profile most likely to have committed the crime. This seemed at odds with a killing at point-blank range, apparently with a sawn-off shotgun fitted with a silencer.  

DCI Hamish Campbell appeared on CrimeWatch to reinforce in the public’s mind that it was an obsessive loner they were looking for. He asked for the public’s help in identifying such a person.

It was a full 15 days after the Cecil Gee coat was seized that it was taken to a Mr Robin Keeley of the Forensic Science Service on 2 May 2000. That 15-day delay has never been explained. He then found a single speck of firearm residue inside the left pocket, and said that it was consistent with the type of firearm used to kill Dando. This was to form the crux of the case against Bulsara, even though no other firearm residue or tools for modifying guns were found in his flat. At his trial at the Old Bailey in May 2001, prosecution barrister Orlando Pownall claimed it was ‘compelling evidence of Bulsara’s guilt’.

During the trial, it emerged that during the forensic procedure, Bulsara’s coat was first of all taken to a police studio where it was photographed on a tailor’s dummy. Firearms had previously been photographed at the same studio, raising the possibility of accidental contamination. This extraordinary decision, according to Detective Sergeant Andy Rowell, was made by DCI Hamish Campbell. Campbell later denied this, but since he was the IO, this convinced no-one.

As we now know, Bulsara was convicted. He appealed against conviction, but his first appeal was rejected in July 2002. He appealed again in 2008 - and this time his appeal succeeded.

In April 2010 it emerged that the Ministry of Justice had denied Barry’s claim of £1.4 million compensation.

The decision was made by Jack Straw, Justice Secretary at the time. A High Court application for compensation was also refused, with judges rejecting his claim that the Justice Secretary had ‘unfairly and unlawfully decided he was not innocent enough’. A year later, a further claim was turned down when High Court judges ruled: “There was indeed a case upon which a reasonable jury, properly directed, could have convicted the claimant of murder.”

The question obviously arose as to whether the police might have fabricated the case against Bulsara by deliberately placing a speck of firearm residue in his coat pocket. This suggestion has been given added credibility by the involvement of DCS Brian Moore, the SIO in this case, in another case of a man being fitted up - Ira Thomas.

Given that senior Met officers chose Brian Moore to act as the SIO in the case of Jill Dando’s murder, it is instructive to look at his major role in another case where it was accepted that an innocent man had been ‘fitted up’.   


CONTINUED HERE: https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t16162-a-biography-of-hamish-campbell-the-man-chosen-to-head-operation-grange#400821

***NEW - Reply received from Mike Penning M.P., Home Office, 6 Jun 2016*** (was: Reasons why the public need a report on Operation Grange: The letter handed in to Prime Minister, David Cameron, on 29 April 2016 in support of the petition

Below is the letter handed in to 10 Downing Street in Friday in support of the petition calling for a report on Operation Grange.

It includes an Appendix, namely the chapter from the book ‘The Smokescreen’ by Julian Peribanez and Antonio Tamarit which exposed the lies behind the false claims made by Metodo 3 boss Francisco Marco about their so-called investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

The day before the petition was due to be handed in, I decided that the letter I had drafted needed an Addendum, to deal with the absurd claims made in most of the tabloid press last week that it was likely that three Portuguese burglars had, between them, abducted Madeleine, and that they could not be arrested because of non-co-operation by the Portuguese authorities.

It was during the petition’s life that I decided it must be presented personally at 10 Downing Street, together with a letter explaining why people had such concern about Operation Grange.

There were quite a few ‘nay-sayers’ who said the petition was ‘pointless’ and ‘a waste of time’. In that respect I an grateful for the comments of Joana Morais in another place this week who wrote: “It is surely better to do something than to do nothing”.

I thought of other people in history to whom people might have said: ‘Don’t bother’. Did some people say to Martin Luther: ‘Look, it’s pointless nailing  up those 95 theses, nothing will change’? Yet his brave action in doing so exposed the gross abuses being perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church, and led to the Reformation.

Before Emile Zola wrote his famous ‘J’accuse’ letter, did some people say, ‘You’re wasting your time’? Yet his courageous action, although it brought    him a great deal of persecution and opposition, inexorably exposed how rampant French anti-Semitism had led the French establishment to frame an innocent the Jew, Alfred Dreyfus, as a spy.

If my letter contains any mistakes, I apologise, please be so good as to point  them out. I am sure that some people will suggest that I have left important things out of the letter. Again, I am sorry if I have omitted any such, but please remember that, unlike any other member of CMOMM, I am under severe legal restrictions about what I can say publicly on the case.

It is intended here as a public record of major question marks about this most bizarre and extraordinary police investigation:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

PART ONE


66 Chippingfield
HARLOW
Essex
CM17 0DJ
Tel: 01279 635789                                                      

e-mail: ajsbennett@btinternet.com                                                                                              

Friday 29 April 2016
Rt Hon David Cameron MP
Prime Minster
10 Downing Street
LONDON
SW1A  2AA

BY HAND

Dear Mr Cameron

re: Petition on the Prime Minister’s website to order the Home Secretary to publish a report on the Madeleine McCann Enquiry [Operation Grange]

First of all thank you for continuing the previous practice of allowing people to submit petitions via the Downing Street Petition site, and also for facilitating my being able to deliver the petition results in person to you today. 

The petition attracted 3,111 signatures. Its preamble states: “Enquiries by British (and Portuguese) police forces have cost around £15 million in 8 years. The public is now entitled to a full report on how that has been spent. The report should cover the role of the government, the security services & UK police forces”. 

I appreciate that only those petitions that attract 10,000 or more signatories are entitled to a government reply. I am also aware that the police do not normally issue reports on their investigations.  However, in view of (a) the totally unprecedented media coverage the Madeleine McCann case has had for the past nine years, (b) the degree of concern that has regularly been expressed in many quarters about the way this operation was initially set up, (c) the way it has since been conducted, (d) the length of time of the operation – 5 years, and (e) its cost, estimated at around  £14 million so far, I trust you will feel able, on this occasion, to respond to the concerns expressed by many thousands of people - and of course the 3,111 who have signed the petition. 

The highly unusual way the initial review was set up, the reasons for it, the very unusual remit, and the later setting-up of what amounted to an active police investigation on foreign soil are all factors that make this police investigation unprecedented.

Added to that, many of the public have repeatedly expressed why this particular missing child case has been singled out, why it has taken so long with no apparent prospect of success, and its £14 million cost. That cost, moreover, excludes the costs of: (1) the Portuguese Police operation, (2) the Leicestershire Police investigation, and (3) the controversial private investigations carried out by the McCanns, their benefactor, Cheshire-based businessman Brian Kennedy, and the Directors of the Find Madeleine Fund.

I now set out some of the main areas of concern on which, we suggest, the public is entitled to persuasive and honest answers:

A. The setting up of the initial Review, 12 May 2011

For two years, the McCanns had been unsuccessfully lobbying two successive Home Secretaries (Alan Johnson, and then Theresa May) to secure a Review. Then Kate McCann decided to publish a book on 11 May 2011, which the Sun newspaper began serialising three weeks beforehand. On 11 May, the Sun published a letter from the McCanns, direct to yourself, appealing for you to order a Review. The very next day you did order a Review. 

Subsequently it emerged from credible sources ‘close to No. 10’, and widely publicised on the BBC and other news networks,

that you had been badgered into setting up the Review by Rebekah Brooks, the Chief Executive Officer of News International, which owns the Sun. There were credible reports that she had threatened you with ‘a week of bad headlines about Theresa May’ if you did not accede to her request. 

These issues were publicly aired by Lord Leveson at the lengthy public enquiry  held into press regulation. Rebekah Brooks was asked a direct question by Lord Leveson as to whether she had ‘threatened’ the Prime Minister in order for the McCanns to secure the Review they had been seeking. She said ‘No’. Lord Leveson then asked her ‘What word would you use, then?’ She smiled, winked and said ‘Persuaded’. It is clear therefore that, whatever words were spoken to you by Rebekah Brooks, she persuaded you to completely reverse decisions made by successive Home Secretaries over the past two years who, in their political and professional judgment, did not agree that there was a persuasive case for a review.

Any report to the public should investigate what Rebekah Brooks did say to you that caused you to order this Review.

Further, it was announced on the very same day (12 May) that the Home Secretary had agreed to establish a Review and had appointed Sir Paul Stephenson, then head of the Metropolitan Police (Met), to set it up. It is unlikely that all of that was done during the 24 hours between the Sun publishing the McCanns’ letter and your announcement of a Review. Any public report should explain how and when your decision was arrived at and whether, in fact, the McCanns’ letter in the Sun was a pre-planned move to enable you to announce the Review the following day.

B. The appointment of Detective Superintendent (DCS) Hamish Campbell as the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) and the person who would decide the remit of the Review

A decision was taken, presumably by the then Head of the Met, Sir Paul Stephenson, to appoint DCS Hamish Campbell as the SIO in the case. He decided the remit of any review or investigation, which has proved controversial.

As any internet search reveals, DCS Campbell is best known for his actions in the case of the prosecution of an innocent man, Barry George/Bulsara, for the cold-blooded murder of TV presenter, Jill Dando, a murder that remains  unsolved to this day. He was the Investigating Officer. On evidence which he helped to assemble, Barry George/Bulsara was wrongly convicted of Jill Dando’s murder and served eight years in jail for a crime he did not commit. At the subsequent Court of Appeal hearing which led to the release of George/Bulsara, the judges suggested that there were strong indications that a trace of firearms residue which matched the known murder weapon of Jill Dando may have been deliberately planted in George/Bulsara’s coat pocket.

Another question which should be fully explained in any public report about Operation Grange is why an officer with such a poor record of criminal investigation and judgment should have been entrusted with this sensitive, high profile and complex investigation.

C. The conduct of Operation Grange: the chief suspects

There is widespread bafflement as to the conduct of Operation Grange.

One crucial aspect is their identification of the chief suspect allegedly responsible for abducting Madeleine McCann.

Until a BBC Crimewatch McCann Special transmitted on 14 October 2013, the chief suspect had been a man carrying a child said to have been seen by the McCanns’ ‘Tapas 7’ friend, Jane Tanner, at exactly 9.15pm on Thursday 3 May, about 45 minutes before Madeleine was reported missing. As Gerry McCann had given evidence that he had checked on his child between 9.05pm and 9.10pm that evening, it was assumed that this abductor must have snatched Madeleine immediately after Gerry McCann left the apartment to return to the Tapas restaurant.

Surprisingly, however, the McCann Team did not release an artist’s sketch of the man that Jane Tanner said she had seen until nearly six months later. This unidentified man remained the chief suspect when Operation Grange began their work in May 2011 and he continued to be featured on the Met Police and the McCanns’ websites for a further two-and-a-half years. This was despite the clear findings of the Portuguese Police enquiry that no reliance could be placed on Jane Tanner’s evidence. 

DCI Redwood on the Crimewatch programme in October 2013 claimed to have ‘found’ this man, but gave a highly improbable account of how he came forward and what he had been doing that night. DCI Redwood, Operation Grange’s Investigating Officer, told the 6.7-million Crimewatch audience that the Met now thought this man had been taking his daughter home from a night crèche at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz.                

There were several unlikely features of DCI Redwood’s account, namely: 

(a) The man had waited for well over six years before approaching the police to say he now thought he might, after all, have been the man seen by Jane Tanner that night


(b) He had been walking past the McCanns’ apartment at exactly the same time as the man Jane Tanner said she had seen a man


(c) He was said by DCI Redwood to have been wearing clothes that week ‘uncannily similar’ to those described by Jane Tanner


(d) He was also carrying a young girl


(e) He was also said to have been carrying her in exactly the same way as described by Jane Tanner.


(f) The viewing public were asked to believe that this man had only just come forward after six years and that, co-incidentally, he had no buggy with in which to carry the child, her mother was not with him, and he had no blanket or other covering to cover the child on a cold and windy night in Portugal – the temperature being only 13C at the time. In addition to all these improbable coincidences, if the man had indeed been walking in the same direction as the man seen by Jane Tanner, a map showed that he had clearly followed a mysteriously circuitous route from the night crèche to have been walking in that place in that direction.

The strange production of this man by DCI Redwood, six years and five months after Madeleine was reported missing, raised many questions and needs a full explanation.

If that was bizarre, then just as bizarre was the new chief suspect unveiled by DCI Redwood on the same programme, namely a man said to have been seen by several members of an Irish family at around 10.00pm on Thursday 3 May 2007, the very time that the McCanns were raising the alarm.

During the programme, DCI Redwood said that this man was ‘the centre of our focus’ – the new chief suspect. He also unveiled two quite different-looking e-fits and told the Crimewatch audience: ‘This is the man we are now looking for’.

It was obvious to those who have a working knowledge of the case that there were major problems about the reliability of both the alleged ‘sighting’ and the accompanying e-fits.

Here is a summary of the main issues about the alleged ‘sighting’ and the two different e-fits:

(a) No member of the Irish family contacted the police about their claimed sighting until 13 days later

(b) When they did so, it was the day after news came in that Robert Murat had been arrested. The father of the family had met Mr Murat on a number of previous occasions

(c) The family have given at least four contradictory reasons for why they delayed reporting their sighting

(d) The descriptions they gave of the person they said they saw matched in almost every respect the description given by the McCanns’ friend, Jane Tanner. Thus all three descriptions – Jane Tanner’s, the Irish family’s, and that of the ‘man from the crèche’ given out by DCI Redwood on the Crimewatch programme - are of an identical-looking man.

(e) As the Met Police have now claimed that this sighting was that of a man carrying his children home from the night crèche, whose description matched that of Jane Tanner, this then raises the question of whether the 10.00pm sighting by the Irish family was either (A) of the ‘man from the crèche’, still carrying his child home (unlikely in the extreme) or (B) of another man altogether – but who looked very much like him, and also carrying a young blonde girl in pyjamas with no covering on her to protect her from the cold

(f) When interviewed on 26 May 2007 in Portugal, all three members of the Irish family said that they would ‘never be able to recognise him if we saw him again’

(g) The e-fits that were shown on the BBC Crimewatch programme were produced by Henri Exton, the former Head of Covert Intelligence at MI5. He had been employed by the McCanns’ leading private investigator at the time. Kevin Halligen. Later, between 2009 and 2013, Halligen spent over four years in jail for committing a major, £1 million-plus fraud. No date has been given for when he drew up these e-fits, but from public statements made by the McCanns, it appear that he and Exton were employed for around four months between April and August 2008. It is reasonable to assume therefore that these e-fist were drawn up during those four months

(h) The claim that members of the Irish family were able to draw up not one, but two e-fits – of faces that looked quite different - 11 months or longer after their original sighting of him, seems unlikely in the extreme. All three Smiths who gave evidence in person to the Portuguese Police admitted that

(i) they had only managed to see the man for a few seconds at the very most

(j) it was dark at the timethe street lighting, in their own words, was ‘weak’, and

(k) they were unable to get a clear view of his face because his face was ‘turned down’ and allegedly partly hidden by the child he was carrying

(l) as can be seen, the two e-fits produced on Crimewatch by the Met Police look like quite different men. There is a big difference in the overall shape of the face, the size of the chin, length of the nose, hairstyle and so on. It is unusual, to say the very last, for any police force to produce two separate and quite different-looking images of a suspect that they really want to find.In addition to all the above reasons for questioning this claimed ‘sighting’, as a result of an article in the Sunday Times on 27 October 2013, we are now much better informed about the history of these e-fits. The Met Police said nothing about their history on BBC Crimewatch, despite knowing fine well what their history was.

But following the Sunday Times article, we now know:

(a) the e-fits were drawn up between April and August 2008

(b) they were shown to the McCanns by Henri Exton some time during this period 

(c) the McCanns are on record as stating that they showed these e-fits to both the Portuguese Police and the Leicestershire Police ‘by’ October 2009. They have not been willing to give the actual dates they were disclosed to each police force

(d)according to the McCanns, neither police force considered that it was worth informing the public about these e-fits

(e) soon after Operation Grange was set up in May 2011, the McCanns showed these e-fits to Operation Grange

(f) Operation Grange did not act to show these e-fits to the public until the BBC Crimewatch programme of 14 October 2013.

Thus it was a minimum of 5 years and 2 months, possibly up to 5 years and 6 months, before these e-fits were shown to the public. 

These very strange issues concerning the ‘sightings’ of three men all allegedly fitting the same description - and the precise circumstances of the history of the e-fits - cry out for the police to explain their conduct.

                                                                                                   
D. The conduct of Operation Grange: the BBC Crimewatch programme of 14 October 2013

I have already made reference to the Crimewatch programme. 

The BBC admitted that it spent over 6 months and £1 million on the preparations for the programme.  The Met Police must have spent a similar amount. It received huge promotion by the BBC and the mainstream press, such that audience figures suggest it was watched by 6.7 million people - a Crimewatch record.  

During the programme, a purported reconstruction of the events of 3 May was shown to viewers. However, it was not faithful to the reported events of that evening. A host of material facts about that day that were made public in August 2008 when the Portuguese Police released full details of their  investigation  on a DVD. But nay of them were omitted from the Met/BBC reconstruction. This is highly unusual because normally a Crimewatch programne will disclose all leading material facts. For example, contradictory accounts of events and changes of story by some of the main witnesses were not featured in the programme. Thus the viewers did not get a balanced picture of events that day. That has led to concerns expressed by many that the programme was much more about public perception than about seeking relevant information from viewers - the normal purpose of Crimewatch. 

That impression was underlined by the fact that the two e-fits were shown to a British audience but not to any audience in Portugal, where the actual alleged sighting happened. There must also be a major question mark about whether two different e-fits of a man allegedly seen six years and five months before the programme was transmitted were ever likely to bring in any new information. The Met Police’s response to a Freedom of Information question I submitted at the end of last year revealed that, two years further on, this ‘mystery man’ had still not been identified. And of course forensic enquiries conducted in the McCanns’ apartment revealed no forensic traces of any abductor.

E. The conduct of Operation Grange: reliance on the unreliable evidence provided by the McCanns’ own investigation team


    
CONTINUED/  https://jillhavern.forumotion.net/t12739-new-reply-received-from-mike-penning-m-p-home-office-6-jun-2016-was-reasons-why-the-public-need-a-report-on-operation-grange-the-letter-handed-in-to-prime-minister-david-cameron-on-29-april-2016-in-support-of-the-petition#337840