{"id":209157,"date":"2020-06-22T07:34:47","date_gmt":"2020-06-22T07:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=209157"},"modified":"2020-06-25T06:18:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T06:18:57","slug":"portuguese-detective-who-led-original-probe-into-madeleine-mccanns-disappearance-claims-prime-suspect-is-a-scapegoat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=209157","title":{"rendered":"Portuguese detective who led original probe into Madeleine McCann&#8217;s disappearance claims prime suspect is a &#8216;scapegoat&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Nick Fagge, Gerard Couzens \u2013 Mail Online June 22, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>Goncalo Amaral described 43-year-old German as an &#8216;almost perfect suspect&#8217;\u00a0<\/strong><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>The former Portuguese police officer said Christian Brueckner is a &#8216;scapegoat&#8217;<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"><strong>In 2008 Amaral claimed Madeleine&#8217;s parents had covered up their daughter&#8217;s accidental death in their Algarve apartment<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_149175\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Madeleine-McCann-missing-child.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-149175\" class=\"wp-image-149175\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Madeleine-McCann-missing-child.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"359\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-149175\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Madeleine McCann. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">A disgraced former Portuguese police officer has branded the new <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/madeleine-mccann\/index.html\"><strong>Madeleine McCann<\/strong><\/a> suspect Christian Brueckner a &#8216;scapegoat.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Goncalo Amaral described the 43-year-old German as an &#8216;almost perfect suspect.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Amaral, who first claimed last April a German paedophile who was in prison would be accused over Maddie&#8217;s disappearance, told a Portuguese TV interviewer on Sunday night: &#8216;When I spoke last year I was talking about the situation that&#8217;s happening now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;It matters little who the paedophile is.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">He added: &#8216;He&#8217;s an almost perfect suspect. All that&#8217;s lacking for him to become the perfect suspect is that he&#8217;s dead.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Asked if he believed Brueckner was the man responsible for Madeleine&#8217;s disappearance, he added: &#8216;To answer that question it has to be proven first that an abduction took place.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\"> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"n3VNCb alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/410\/media\/images\/52465000\/jpg\/_52465807_52465804.jpg\" alt=\"Madeleine McCann's parents seek phone hacking probe role - BBC News\" data-noaft=\"1\" \/> The ex-cop, who claimed in a 2008 controversial book Madeleine&#8217;s parents had covered up their daughter&#8217;s accidental death in their Algarve apartment, went on to repeat his well-known criticism of the British youngster&#8217;s parents and their Tapas Seven holiday friends.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">He accused them of abandoning their children to eat out at night and lying to Portuguese police, and said Madeleine had been left crying for around an hour the night before she vanished on May 3 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The McCanns began a lengthy legal battle against Amaral in 2008, suing him for defamation after the publication of his book\u00a0The Truth of The Lie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">But during his half-hour-long interview with Portuguese broadcaster TVI on Sunday, he also accused the authorities of altering photos of the two-tone VW camper van Brueckner was using around the time Madeleine disappeared.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The former PJ chief, who was removed as head of the Madeleine McCann inquiry in 2008 after criticising British police officers, showed interviewer Jose Alberto Carvalho photos he said were taken in Portugal of the same vehicle.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">One of the photos he produced showed a series of very distinctive Minion-style characters painted on the front and back of the camper van, which in the picture put out by police had no markings on it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">He said: &#8216;It&#8217;s the same vehicle flagged up in the police appeal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;I think it&#8217;s important to ask why the photo put out by the authorities of the van was altered. Would that vehicle have gone unnoticed in Praia da Luz with those markings on it? I don&#8217;t think so.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Suggesting the van could have looked very different in 2007 to the way it appeared in the photo put out by British police, he added: &#8216;Is it that the German authorities reached the conclusion that the van wasn&#8217;t like that when it was being driven in Praia da Luz in 2007? Who said that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Pressed on what Portuguese police knew about Brueckner&#8217;s past around the time Madeleine disappeared, he appeared to admit Algarve authorities were aware of his 1994 teenage sexual conviction for molesting a six-year-old girl by confessing: &#8216;At the time all we knew was that this man was a paedophile.&#8217;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">He also claimed German authorities wanted to re-examine all the DNA evidence taken from the McCanns&#8217; hire car and holiday apartment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Rubbishing reports a saliva sample had been found on Madeleine&#8217;s bedspread and could prove key to a conviction now Brueckner had been identified as a new suspect, he said it had been proven it belonged to a baby being fed mother&#8217;s milk staying in the apartment before the McCanns arrived.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Asked why he thought the German authorities might have interest in coming up with new information which had no real value, Amaral claimed: &#8216;Because it enables them to have jurisdiction over this case.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8216;I think the Portuguese police and the authorities can do anything here in laboratories that they can do in Germany. &#8216;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Amaral&#8217;s interview was his first since Brueckner&#8217;s name was made public &#8211; and the first time he has spoken about the case since last December when he appeared on Spanish TV.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-8445467\/Maddie-McCann-prime-suspect-Christian-Brueckner-scapegoat-says-Portuguese-detective.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Also see:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ccffff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=149172\">\u2018Someone is protecting Madeleine McCann\u2019s kidnappers\u2019 claims cop who spent years hunting her<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #ccffff;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=143672\">McCann\u2019s Embedded Confessions \u2013 Part 1 to 3<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Police officer, who predicted last April that a German paedophile would be accused of Madeleine\u2019s disappearance, described the accused as an \u2018almost perfect suspect\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News","category-Commentary"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209157"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209164,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209157\/revisions\/209164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}