"For the first time, Gonçalo Amaral speaks about the case that destroyed his career, his family and his health..."My life is gone, I’m only alive due to my heart"
"Condemned to pay 500 thousand euro to the parents of Maddie, the little English three-year-old girl that disappeared in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, on the 3rd of May of 2007, the former inspector will fight until the last legal instance, because he is "a free man and citizen" with "the right to express opinions".
"What was your reaction when you found out that the verdict from the court was unfavourable to you in the defamation suit that the McCanns filed against you?"
"I found out about the verdict through a friend who called me telling me about the news on the radio. I immediately called my lawyer, but he hadn’t been notified and the verdict was not in the process. It’s sad, but my lawyer could only access the sentence, that afternoon, because a British journalist sent it to him by e-mail. There is no doubt that the couple’s lawyer has good connections at the court. My reaction was one of calm and a wish to read the full contents of the verdict as soon as it was available on the Citius website, which only happened the next day, but with the date of the previous day. Mysteries which the webs of justice weave. "
"Were you surprised?"
"I wasn’t surprised, it was one of the open possibilities, but after the decision about the matter of fact, which was favourable to me, I trusted that the verdict would come in the same direction. "
"Do you think there are errors in the process? Do you feel wronged?"
"Those are not mistakes, but value judgements and understandings that are contrary to mine and to that of many other jurists. As for feeling wronged…What do you think? I can only ask if those who, for more than five nights, left their three children, aged three and two, to their own devices in a house within an unknown space, subjecting them to a thousand dangers, while they were partying with friends – not to mention the amounts of alcohol that was ingested on those occasions -, still has the right to be compensated. They practiced a crime of exposing and abandoning defenceless children and they weren’t even accused of that fact. Looking at our criminal legislation, at the English child protection legislation and at cases that recently happened with British subjects in the Algarve, after drunken nights, all that I can say is that the McCann couple is primarily responsible for their daughter’s disappearance. She only disappeared because they neglected her guard and, as parents, they were obliged to it. It is a fact that they lost their daughter, but that doesn’t give them the right to sue anyone or to be compensated. They can’t escape their guilt, which is enough to rob them of their sleep, to provoke a lack of appetite and even rage, but against themselves and not against someone who only wrote down what happened during the first five months of the investigation, according to what is in the case files. If compensation takes place, all that I can do is warn you: be careful, there’s people who may turn this into a new business! "
"Don’t you feel revolted by this verdict? "
"I don’t feel revolt, but I do not conform to it, I still trust our country’s justice system, for which I have worked for over 25 years, and I still am a free citizen with all my rights. On the other hand, even the question that Maddie’s siblings, then aged two, may someday read my book and become traumatized doesn’t concern me. Those two children were also abandoned for over five nights in a row and surely they will understand that what is written there is the result of a criminal investigation. "
"There is a question that those two children will certainly ask when they grow up but that question will be directed at the parents: why were they abandoned, left to their own devices? Those children are free to think and to conclude that whatever happened to their daughter could have happened to one of them. The parents can only fear that their two children who did not disappear on that tragic night revolt against them...."
"Have you never considered suing the McCanns over the damages that they caused to your family?"
"Each thing in its own time, it won’t be only the McCanns, but their group of friends, and other people and entities that will be sued. There is an illicit action that was indeed performed, the neglect in guarding their children, which caused direct damages to many people, not only to myself, but for example to the Ocean Club workers, who were fired and saw their lives change, many of them unjustly passing from mere employees and heads of family to suspects in a criminal investigation, while they had nothing to do with the matter"
Read more http://pjga.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/nova-gente-interview-with-goncalo-amaral_15.html?m=1
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