Disgraced Madeleine McCann cop Goncalo Amaral brands Maddie murder suspect a ‘scapegoat’ on Portuguese TV
DISGRACED Madeleine McCann cop Goncalo Amaral had branded the new German murder suspect a “scapegoat” on Portuguese TV.
The former Portuguese police officer described 43-year-old Christian B as an “almost perfect suspect”.
Amaral first claimed last April that a German paedophile who was in prison would be accused over Madeleine’s disappearance.
He told a Portuguese TV interviewer last night: “When I spoke last year I was talking about the situation that’s happening now.
“It matters little who the paedophile is.”
He added: “He’s an almost perfect suspect. All that’s missing for him to become the perfect suspect is for him to be dead.”
Asked if he believed Christian B was the man responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance, he added: “To answer that question it has to be proven first that an abduction took place.”
He’s an almost perfect suspect. All that’s missing for him to become the perfect suspect is for him to be dead.”
Goncalo Amaral
The ex-cop claimed in a controversial 2008 book that Madeleine’s parents had covered up their daughter’s accidental death in their Algarve apartment.
The McCanns claimed the book was "unfounded and grossly defamatory" and launched legal action against Amaral in 2009.
In 2015, Kate and Gerry were awarded around £450,000 in libel damages by a Portuguese court, although this decision was later overturned.
But Amaral used his latest TV appearance to repeat his well-known criticism of the Brit youngster’s parents and their “Tapas Seven” holiday pals.
He accused them of abandoning their children to eat out at night and lying to Portuguese police, and said Madeleine had been crying the night before she vanished on May 3, 2007.
But during his half-hour-long interview with Portuguese broadcaster TVI, he also insinuated the German authorities had altered photos of the two-tone VW camper van Christian B was using around the time Madeleine disappeared.
The former PJ chief, who was removed as head of the Madeleine McCann inquiry in 2008 after criticising Brit cops, showed interviewer Jose Alberto Carvalho photos he said were taken in Portugal of the same vehicle.
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.
He said: “It’s the same vehicle flagged up in the police appeal.
“I think it’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’t think so.”
He went on to say any appeal focused on the van from the official photos without the distinctive markings would be a waste of time.
At the time all we knew was that this man was a paedophile.”
Goncalo Amaral
He claimed detectives were not aware of Christian B’s 1994 teenage sexual conviction for molesting a six-year-old girl.
But he confessed: “At the time all we knew was that this man was a paedophile.”
He also came out against German authorities’ plans to re-examine DNA evidence taken from the McCanns’ hire car and holiday apartment.
Amaral rubbished reports a saliva sample had been found on Madeleine’s bedspread and could prove key to a conviction now Christian B had been identified as a new suspect.
He said it had been proven it belonged to a baby being fed mother’s milk staying in the apartment before the McCanns arrived.
Asked why he thought the German authorities might have interest in coming up with new information which in his opinion had no real value, Amaral claimed: “Because it enables them to have jurisdiction over this case.
“I think the Portuguese police and the authorities can do anything here in laboratories that they can do in Germany.”
Amaral’s interview was his first since Christian B’s name was made public - and the first time he has spoken about the case since last December.
He spoke last year on Spanish TV to rule out speculation Hamburg-born child strangler Martin Ney was being probed over Madeleine’s disappearance, months after claiming on an Australian podcast that a scapegoat was being prepared by police.
He failed to identify Ney by name at the time, describing the suspect only as someone who had been ruled out of the investigation into the missing British youngster in 2008 but later jailed in his home country.
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Amaral told the Spanish TV programme: “A paedophile who is German and serving life for killing children has been spoken about.
“What I know is that the suspect is not him, it’s another man.
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“He’s also in prison in Germany. He’s also a paedophile.
“Years later, many years later, it appears that in an Internet chatroom there is a conversation between that person and another person where they talk about Madeleine.”
