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| Maddie News August 9 - |
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wvgirl
 Posted:
Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:07 pm |
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Maddie News August 9
Deborah Orr - Opinion piece Independent
Deborah Orr
Saturday, 9 August 2008
* One of the many gross liberties that the media have taken in their reporting of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is the widespread adoption of a diminutive epithet. No matter how often her distressed parents insisted that their daughter had always been known only as Madeleine, the fictitious intimacy of Maddie, or Maddy, endured. Now an Amsterdam shop assistant, Ana Stam, claims that she talked to a girl who told her that her name was Maddie, and that she had been stolen from her parents. Maybe the Portuguese police were remiss in failing to take seriously this sighting. But in my experience a small child thinks that her name is what her parents say it is, and not what the press has christened her.
Police scour bank CCTV after Madeleine spotted by guard, 09 August 2008
Police scour bank CCTV after Madeleine spotted by guard Daily Express
By John Chapman and Mark Reynolds
Saturday August 9, 2008
Poilce were last night trawling through CCTV images from a Belgian bank as the parents of Madeleine McCann were given fresh hope that she could be found.
A blonde, blue-eyed girl who looked "much like" Madeleine was spotted in the bank in Brussels on Monday morning this week.
An eagle-eyed member of staff saw the youngster in the company of a woman of North African appearance.
Crucially, the sighting came before the 30,000-page Portuguese police file on the case was released later on Monday and explains why it is being treated so seriously.
It emerged last night that the bank official who suspected the little girl was Madeleine is a male security officer who monitors the branch’s CCTV images.
A police source said: "He is convinced he saw Madeleine but obviously it needs checking out carefully. We have been in this position before and we don’t want to make any mistakes."
Detectives are not revealing the name of the witness or the location of the branch, apart from saying it is a KBC Bank in west Brussels.
A Belgian police spokesman said: "We always take these reports seriously and are looking into the matter.
"A worker in the bank saw a North African woman with a young blonde girl with blue eyes. The child was said to be much like Madeleine."
Belgium's sordid history of sex crimes and paedophile rings is now firmly under the spotlight amid concerns that she was stolen to order by child sex perverts.
Interpol officials in Brussels have received 107 reports of "sightings" since she vanished while on holiday with her family in Portugal on May 3 last year.
Thirty-six were investigated, 34 were deemed too vague and 37 came from clairvoyants.
Private detectives working for Kate and Gerry McCann, from Rothley, Leicestershire, are to check out the most credible sightings.
The McCanns' family spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said the couple's investigators welcomed information about all possible sightings but were most interested in recent reports.
He urged people with information to pass on any leads to the detectives using the contact numbers on the McCanns' website, www.findmadeleine.com. Mr Mitchell said: "The critical information they really need is recent sightings."
A Scotland Yard intelligence report sent to Portuguese police warned that Madeleine had been targeted by a Belgian child sex gang. But they admitted the report from a secret source "may have been wrong."
The police files from Portugal revealed a spate of sightings in Belgium last summer.
On May 15, music journalist Line Compere reported seeing the youngster with an Eastern European couple on a tram.
She told the Daily Express: "I keep playing the moment over and over in my mind. Could that girl have been Madeleine? In any case, I have little doubt that this child had been kidnapped."
Ms Compere, 31, added: "We were on the Number 18 tram from Porte d’Anderlecht going towards the Gare du Midi. They got off and then got on to the number 51 tram.
"She really looked like Madeleine, but her hair was different. In the photos I saw of Madeleine, she had a fringe, but this girl did not. She was dressed all in pink and was in a pushchair.
"I was standing close to her and saw her eyes – they were blue. But I did not notice any marking on her eye. She was with a man and a woman, both between 35 and 40. They were white but had dark hair and looked Eastern European. They were both dressed in dark clothes. The girl looked very different to the adults. I was interviewed by Belgian police who launched an inquiry, and I gave them all the details I knew."
Ms Compere said she saw the girl 12 days after three-year-old Madeleine disappeared in Praia da Luz.
She told police her suspicions were aroused because the man and woman with the youngster did not look like her, appeared to be speaking a different language and did not seem to know her well.
At this point she had never seen a picture of Madeleine, but later that day she was shown a photograph of the missing girl, according to the files.
Ms Compere told police in her interview on June 1 last year: "When I saw the photo it immediately jumped out to me that there was a big resemblance to the little girl on the tram."
Later that month a Briton saw a youngster asleep on a train travelling from Brussels to Antwerp. He said the child could have been drugged.
In June, Belgian-born Gilles Crippiau said he saw a girl looking like Madeleine in a town near the French border.
A Dutch witness, 41-year-old mother-of-one Anna Stam, has met the McCanns' spokesman Mr Mitchell and helped to draw an artist's impression of the people she believes she saw with the missing child.
She claims a girl calling herself Maddie was in her shop accompanied by a "strange" family.
The sketches show a dark-featured man with a moustache in his late 30s, who was speaking Portuguese, and a brown-haired woman in her 40s talking French.
Ms Stam was approached by the young girl who asked her in unaccented English: "Do you know where my mummy is?"
When Ms Stam told the girl her mother was in the store, the child replied: "She is not my mummy," adding "She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy."
Ms Stam said she thought that the girl looked "very much like" Madeleine, apart from the colour of her hair.
I saw her on Monday, 09 August 2008
Daily Express 09 August 2008
I saw her on Monday Daily Express
By John Chapman
Saturday August 9, 2008
The hunt for Madeleine McCann focused on Belgium last night after it emerged that police are investigating a fresh sighting.
A bank worker in Brussels reported seeing Madeleine accompanied by a woman of North African appearance on Monday morning.
The witness is believed to be a security guard who was operating the bank’s CCTV system. Detectives were last night poring over images taken from the cameras at a branch of the KBC Bank.
Police are said to be particularly interested in this latest sighting because it was reported to them before files were released by Portuguese police earlier this week in which further sightings in Belgium were documented.
It will also offer renewed hope to Gerry and Kate McCann after it was revealed that there have been more than 100 similar reports from people claiming to have spotted the youngster since she was snatched.
Watch your kids for Maddie's sake, 09 August 2008
Watch your kids for Maddie's sake The Sun
Lorraine Kelly
Published: Today, August 09, 2008
OF all the many cruelties inflicted on Madeleine McCann's parents, the possibility that their little girl begged an Amsterdam shop assistant for help shortly after she went missing is surely the deepest cut of all.
According to Anna Stam, who worked in a party shop and whose statement has only come to light this week, the little girl told her that her name was Maddie then asked Anna if she knew where her mummy was.
She added that the woman she was in the shop with was "not my mummy" and that "they took me from my holiday".
It is chilling enough for us to read, but can you imagine the effect on Kate and Gerry McCann?
Anna, who called the police in Holland, said the child spoke English and had a very pallid and emotionless face.
If it was Madeleine, this would make sense as she would be in deep shock at being ripped away from her mum and dad and the twins.
This sighting was just days after Madeleine disappeared. Although Portuguese police were informed, Kate and Gerry were never told and, as far as we know, it was never checked up or acted upon.
This week it also emerged there were two further sightings of a little girl in Amsterdam who matched Madeleine's description and three more in Belgium.
Pensioner Hannie Weichmann, who claims one of the sightings in Amsterdam, said: "Those eyes. I knew it was her."
All of these cases could have been nothing more than mistaken identity, but we will never know for sure.
Howl
The police in Portugal were so focused on trying to shoehorn the evidence into proving Madeleine's parents had killed their daughter that they lost a potential chance to find the little girl.
More and more experts now believe that Madeleine, a stunningly beautiful child, was specifically targeted by a paedophile ring and "kidnapped to order".
I know that the thought of what these monsters can do to children has given Kate and Gerry sleepless nights, but their anger and frustration at the profoundly inept police investigation must have also made them want to howl in despair.
It transpired this week that Kate even sent a heartbreaking letter to the police pleading with them to share information and begging them to work with her and Gerry to find their daughter.
It is deeply moving and shows not only her utter despair, but also her desire to move heaven and earth to find her girl.
Without wanting to panic every parent with a cute little boy or girl under five, it is clear there are evil gangs of paedophiles who will stop at nothing to get their hands on little kids.
Those who snatched Madeleine are still lurking out there, possibly taking photos of other boys and girls and plotting their next kidnap.
I believe we desperately need some sort of Europe-wide anti-paedophile task force with enough money to be effective and enough expertise to smash these vile rings of perverts and sickos.
We are in the middle of the holiday season and it is easy to be less vigilant when we are in a "sun, sea and sand" mentality.
Without becoming paranoid we need to keep a watchful eye on our children and grandchildren at all times. Don't think it could never happen to you.
That's what Kate and Gerry McCann believed. They will spend the rest of their lives searching for their daughter and torturing themselves over whether she is alive or dead.
And if she is still in the land of the living, just what sort of hell is she being subjected to?
http://www.mccannfiles.com/id79.html
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