Najoua Chekaya's short police statement, 14 August 2008

The aerobic instructor short statement Gazeta Digital   Duarte Levy and Paulo Reis Thursday August 14 2008   Najoua Chekaya arrived in Portugal on March 2007, recruited in England to work for Mark Warner, according to her statement to the PJ, in May 2007. Just a curiosity, the translator was Robert Murat. She described her daily working routine, as an aerobics instructor and said that when she arrived at Ocean Club, she was asked also to perform a "Quiz Game", at night (09:00 pm), at the Tapas Bar, twice a week – every Sunday and Tuesday.   On May 1, 2007, after the "Quiz" was finished, Najoua was invited by Gerry McCann to sit at their table, to have a drink. She was there for 15/20 minutes, between 9.30 and 9:50 pm. There was just casual talk and she doesn't know if Madeleine's mother was at the table or not.   During that period of time, nobody left the table, but there was an empty chair. Who has been sitting at that chair, Najoua didn't know.   *   Comment: This is an extremely important piece of information, as we had previously been led to believe that at 9.30pm, on the night of Madeleine's disappearance, Ms Chekaya had been invited to join the tapas table, by Gerry McCann, following completion of the quiz. Her police statement makes it quite clear that this was not the case. Consequently, she cannot corroborate, or provide an alibi for, any of the McCanns or their friends movements on the night of May 3rd.   First mention of Najoua Chekaya was in Sol on 30 June 2007:   An aerobic instructor from the resort entertains the dinner guests at Tapas with a 'Quiz'. At 9.30 p.m. the game ends, and Gerry invites her to their table, where she stays for half an hour. During that time, as she later confided to friends, nobody left the table, but one of the chairs was vacant. Najova Chekaya refuses to talk to Sol.   The Daily Mail later picked up the story, twice:   Madeleine and the missing hour: how often did the McCanns check on their children? Daily Mail   By SUE REID Last updated at 16:31 11 August 2007   Sitting beside a swimming pool in the Algarve on that May evening Gerry and Kate McCann were enjoying themselves. The tapas bar of the Mark Warner holiday resort in Praia da Luz was buzzing with holidaymakers and it was quiz night.   The McCanns were favourites to win the contest organised by the resort's aerobics teacher Najova Chekaya. After all, the two doctors had brains on their side. Around their table were seven friends from England, three of them also doctors and one a top medical research fellow.   (...)   And what of Najova Chekaya, the aerobics teacher running the quiz? She was invited over to the McCann table by Mr McCann himself when the game ended at 9.30. She stayed for half an hour. She later claimed to friends that nobody left the table.   I just want to go home, says fitness teacher who is key witness Daily Mail   Last updated at 12:03 16 August 2007   A Briton critical to the Madeleine McCann investigation has told friends she is now desperate to leave Portugal.   Aerobics instructor Najoua Chekaya was chatting with Gerry and Kate McCann and their friends when Madeleine, then three, vanished from the family's Algarve apartment in Praia da Luz.   That night, Ms Chekaya had organised a bar quiz at the Ocean Club resort where the McCanns were staying. Her evidence is understood to corroborate the McCanns' movements in the hour before the disappearance was discovered.   This week police in Portugal publicly declared the McCanns, both doctors from Leicestershire, were not suspects following a smear campaign which suggested they and their friends were somehow implicated.   Ms Chekaya, 21, from Flitwick, Beds, is still working in Praia da Luz for Ocean Club operator Mark Warner.   But she wrote to one friend on social networking site Facebook: "Missin you guys loads. dun with portugal now, wana cum home n have fun in flitwick!! neva thought id say that!!"   Portuguese laws make it an offence for witnesses in a criminal inquiry to discuss their evidence, but it is understood Ms Chekaya was invited by Mr McCann to join his table when the quiz finished at 9.30pm.   It is understood she remained chatting with the McCanns and their friends until 10pm, when Mrs McCann went to check on Madeleine and discovered her daughter missing. What happened between 9pm and 10pm is likely to hold the key to Madeleine's fate.   Mr McCann checked on Madeleine and her two younger siblings at 9.05pm and reported that all was well and his daughter fast asleep.   About 10 to 15 minutes after he returned to the table, a friend, Jane Tanner, went to check. She reported seeing a dark-haired man of about 35 carrying a child as she walked back to the bar afterwards but thought nothing of it.

'Kate's Diary', under the magnifying glass, 14 August 2008

Kate's Diary TV Mais (no online link, appears in magazine edition only)   Under the magnifying glass   (Note: 'TV Mais' is a Portuguese television magazine, similar to 'TV Times' in the UK. This article appears in this weeks issue and is an analysis of "Kate's Diary" by a Portuguese psychologist.)   Thursday August 14 2008 Thanks to 'lisbonirish' for translation   Narcissistic, immature and predictable. As if she were writing to lead the reader on. This is the conclusion of an analysis of the writings know as "Kate's Diary" by psychologist Quintino Aires. "I need you to come back." That is one of the sentences repeated most by Kate McCann in the journal she wrote that is commonly referred to in the media as "Kate's Diary". We showed the writings to Quintino Aires, chair professor of psychology. "She seems to be more concerned about herself than about poor Maddie", he finds.   TV Mais has established that Kate only began writing the journal almost two weeks after Madeleine McCann disappeared. But the "diary" looks as if it was begun before 3rd May 2007. One only has to look at the diverse appearance of the writings, with different colours of pen and writing styles, for example, to understand that it was written in different stages and in differing emotional states. Written and added to as she deemed convenient.   "It's the Kate McCann we already know", explains Quintino Aires. "The narcissistic personality of this woman, which has already been alluded to several times, comes out very clearly in these writings. Her complaints about the negative effect the physical exertion is having on her body, which "annoys" her; how she feels very tired at the vigil on the 25 May, which she thinks is too long (contrary to what a mother suffering the loss of her daughter would feel, being buoyed up by the joint attention of others…); the enthusiastic way she refers to the photo session or even the conference in the British Consulate, which, she highlights, ended in applause from the media. Kate's venting about the difficulty she has in answering questions in moments that are less controlled and not predicted. In her writings one can very frequently identify traits of an immature and narcissistic personality", the psychologist explained to TV Mais. Instead of "I need you to come back", which Kate repeats so many times in her notes, Quintino Aires says that one would normally expect to find "how are you feeling?". In other words: Kate is more concerned with herself than with her daughter. Relevant or not? On 12 September 2007, "Público" reported on its website that "the PJ has seized a copy of Kate McCann's diary, a document that could contain relevant information that would help to clarify the case of the disappearance of her daughter Madeleine". The report turned out to be true. The seizure took place during a search of the house the McCanns had rented in Praia da Luz. Amongst other things, Maddie's mother complained that her children were hysterical and that her husband didn't help her as much as he should.   The PJ already considered Kate's notes to be important for the investigation in its interim report and Prosecutor's Office filed a request that the diary be added to the case evidence. But the criminal instruction judge presiding over the investigation in Portimão rejected the request, as did the Évora Court of Appeal. Little emotion The events following Maddie's disappearance, her mother's anguish and despair, the solidarity of her friends and the media impact of the case are other aspects referred to in the notes. Quintino Aires explains that writing things down helps us to organise our thoughts, especially when we are going through trying times.   "Many people use this as an instrument to deal with the anxiety. So it is nothing out of the ordinary that Kate has written the notes, regardless of whether she did so on her own initiative or at the suggestion of a friend or specialist. What is surprising is the structure and content of the document, given that it does not follow the normal format for texts of this kind.   "By this I mean, when we open a diary of a mother who is suffering the loss of her daughter (who is completely vulnerable, not least because of her very young age), we would expect to read about her feelings for her daughter, her fears about the suffering her daughter might be going through and that she (the mother) cannot prevent because she is not with her. "But what can we read in Kate McCann's journal? Endless lists of the time she got up, what time she went jogging, what time she had lunch or dinner and what time she went to bed at. Who she met and who she talked to. Extreme concern and detail as regards names of people and the companies they belong to. In terms of emotions or feelings, only references to who she likes, because they talked or behaved the way Kate wanted them to, and who she doesn't like (especially Portuguese and German journalists…).   "The journal goes into such detail in matters that have nothing to do with emotion or feeling that, throughout the text, I have the feeling several times that Kate is writing with the aim of guiding the thoughts of the reader. The messages to Madeleine are so short and coincidental that they go under, and many times they only come following a comment or attitude by someone who Kate is describing. Judging by the way it is written, the journal can be divided into four phases.   "One can note the improvement and adaptation along the way. Whoever wrote it got better at it with practice…", explains the psychologist, who concludes as follows: "On the basis of all this, I am not surprised to read "I need you to come back" so many times and almost never "how are you feeling?". She seems to be more concerned with herself than with poor Maddie… It's the Kate McCann we had already got to know".

My name is Maddie. They took me from my holidays, 19 August 2008

My name is Maddie. They took me from my holidays Público (no online link, appears in paper edition only)   By Andreia Sanches and Paul Torres de Carvalho 19 August 2008 Thanks to 'lisbonirish' for translation   Dozens of files. Hundreds of witness questioning records. Dozens of likenesses, letters, notes. P2 has read many of the pages that have piled up on the desks of the inspectors who investigated the disappearance of the English girl in the Algarve. Will we ever know what happened to Madeleine?   By Andreia Sanches and Paula Torres de Carvalho.   Fourteen months of searches, witness statements, leads – some ruled out, others followed up. "The conclusion one can draw from all the work that has been carried out (…) is that it is not possible to concretely and objectively determine what really happened" on the night of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the PJ concluded in a report included in the thousands of pages of the "Maddie Case", which were released from judicial secrecy only days ago. In the last two weeks, the child’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, their private investigators and their lawyers have been studying the files in detail. The press as well. What did the PJ do with the information they received? What leads are still worth following up? That is what they hope to find out in the files. In a Dutch shop with "no emotion showing in her face" Lunchtime, somewhere between 1.00 p.m. and 2.00 p.m. on a day in May. Anna Martha Stam, a 42-year-old Dutch citizen, was with her colleagues in the shop where she works – a joke article shop in Amsterdam – when the couple entered. He "had a light moustache" and wasn't very nice. She "was slender" and spoke with a French accent. At least that was what remained in the shop assistant's mind, though she admits that she doesn't recall the couple all that well. She has a much better memory of the child in their company, a little girl who approached her at one stage. "My name is Maddie", said the girl in accent-free English. Anna Stam is not the only person in the world after 3 May 2007 – the date on which Madeleine McCann, aged 3, disappeared from apartment 5A of the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz – has claimed to have spoken to someone "aged four or five" who not only looked like Maddie but also said her name was Maddie. But her witness statement taken by the Dutch police is particularly perturbing. "What attracted my attention was that she showed little or no emotion in her face", she told the Dutch police. "She asked me in English: 'Do you know where my mummy is?' And I told her that her mother was back there in the shop." Anna was sure that the woman with the French accent was the girl's mother. But the child apparently replied: "She is not my mummy". And added: "They took me from my holidays". The supposed "mother" later explained to the shop assistant that she had a small circus in France. She bought "scary masks", clown's clothes and "fake bloody fingers" and similar items totalling € 237.00. Then they all left the store. It was only later that Anna found out about the Praia da Luz case. Her witness statement was forwarded to the PJ on 15 June 2007. In the lengthy case files now made available on the 14 months of investigation into the "Maddie Case" it is not clear what the PJ did with this statement or what follow-up work they carried out. And this has led to reactions. "We need to know what was done with this. This is exactly the type of prime information where we need to know if it duly taken into account by the police", the McCanns' spokesperson, Clarence Mitchell, told the BBC. The Maltese lead: "You are not my mummy" Kate and Gerry McCann, Maddie's parents, their private investigators and lawyers and the press have been dissecting the content of the thousands of pages of case files that were released from judicial secrecy: the main body of the files is made up of 17 volumes and 4,500 pages. And then there are 55 volumes of appendices and 22 files. Not all of the material was made public. In the 14 volumes of "Appendix V" alone there are thousands of reports that make up, in the words of the PJ, "a large and dispersed web of supposed sightings and pinpointings" that "contained little, vague, contradictory, incompatible or incongruous information". Maddie was seen in Indonesia, Singapore, Mozambique, Syria. On 11 May, eight days after her disappearance, she was, according to many witness statements, in Brazil, Canada, Brussels, Zurich Airport and on the ferry to Ayamonte… all on the same day. The rate of claimed sightings was "excessive" in the weeks of May, June and July… And they often meant that an unnecessary waste of time for those who had to investigate them. Because some of the reports "merited being looked into", as the hundreds of interview records and reports of other police work, involving both the Portuguese police and the police forces of other countries, show. Others, however, were given minimum heed – on some reports one can even see handwritten notes by the investigators, such as: "no interest". Others again were put on hold for the future – awaiting "solid information". It is not always clear what was done in a "supposed sighting" situation. For example, in the case of the two British tourists, twin sisters, who claimed to have travelled on a bus in Malta on 17 June 2007 "with a girl who looked very much like Madeleine McCann", and who even had "a peculiar mark in her right eye" – and Maddie does indeed have such a mark. The woman the child was travelling with "prevented" her from talking to the tourists "several times", they said. But the girl finally said to her: "You are not my mum". The Maltese police showed interest in the witness statement and asked the PJ for more information: "Does the missing girl speak with a Scottish accent?" Maddie only speaks with an accent "when she is joking/mocking her father", who has such an accent, the PJ replied. "Can we see mummy soon?" Morocco was also the scene of numerous "sightings", as the PJ calls them. Anne Mari Olli, a 45-year-old Norwegian retired social worker living in Spain, for example, says that she saw a blonde girl looking sad in a petrol station in Marrakech. The girl was with a man who did not look like her father. "Can we see mummy soon", the child apparently asked. This was on 10 May, seven days after the disappearance in Praia da Luz. Olli only saw the news that evening. "I am certain that it was the girl", she says in one of the messages forwarded to the police in Portimão. Information added by the PJ, dated 6 June, one month after the alleged "sighting", reveals that the CCTV footage from the petrol station, which had been requested by the British police, with the knowledge of the Portuguese police, "was not available in VHS, as they are very short and was taped over". The lead from the Norwegian woman led to nothing. Around the same time, Madeleine, or someone who looks like her, was allegedly seen by many other people in the same region: on 19 May in a mansion in the area of Massira; on 15 June in Agadir; on 19 June in Marrakech; on 26 September again in Marrakech… Report on a strong suspect Two days after Madeleine's disappearance, a Portuguese emigrant in Germany, who was on holiday with his family in Sagres, went to the PJ in Portimão to report a situation that had alarmed him. A situation the PJ took very seriously: married to a German woman, a father of two children – a boy of almost three and a girl almost four years of age – Nuno de Jesus had gone to the beach at Mareta on 29 April 2007. His children were having fun in the sand "playing the normal games children of their age play", he said. Between 4.00 p.m. and 5.00 p.m., Jesus "noticed the presence of an individual with a small, silver-coloured camera, who was covertly taking photos of his children in a detached way". Nuno de Jesus states that, after having photographed his children, "the individual possibly took more photos of two boys, aged nine and five, who were the sons of a couple" next to them on the beach. Given this behaviour, and "assuming that the 'photographer's' objective was to kidnap his children or make illicit use of the photographs", Nuno de Jesus says he began to stare at the photographer in a threatening and aggressive way, which led him to move away and leave the beach", one can read in the interview statement taken by the PJ. Later, the emigrant saw the same man again near a street café approaching his daughter. He had no doubt that the man's intention was to snatch the girl. On the basis of this statement, the investigators drove to Sagres and established that a car similar to the one Jesus had described as belonging to the suspect had been hired by a Polish citizen, Wojciech Krokowski, who was in Portugal with his wife, Anetta Krokowski. They were staying in an apartment in Burgau, which is very close to Praia da Luz. All details of his stay in Portugal until his return home, via Berlin, were studied in minute detail. The PJ inspectors determined that the couple returned home without a child. Their home in Warsaw was searched by the local police. "The result was negative. This couple does not have the missing child", states written information from Interpol, dated 6 May 2007. The girl who shouted "help" in Mem Martins The photographs showing a close-up of the blemish Madeleine McCann has in the iris of her right eyed travelled the world. It was a very particular mark, which, as the parents believed, would help anyone who saw her to recognise her. That is why they highlighted it a lot. And there were a lot of people around the country (and indeed around the world) who were bending down to look children they encountered straight into the eyes. In addition to the shop assistant in Amsterdam and the twin sister tourists in Malta, there are dozens of witnesses who are very certain that they saw the child because of that special mark, as reports filed by the PJ show. On 13 May 2007, for example, a woman named Vontrat Sylvie contacted the police in Colmar (France), saying that, on 11 May, she had seen a gypsy couple with a pram carrying a child that did not look like their daughter at all. The woman said she had gone up to the girl, looked into her eye and that she had a mark. French police issued e-fit photos of the couple. One month later, on 11 June, the PSP police force in Amadora, received a report from a man who had just seen a girl with straight blonde hair, dressed in a track suit and with a mark in her eye in a restaurant in Mem Martins. The man spoke some words to her, called her Madeleine. According to the man's report the child reacting by shouting: "Help!" The man the child was with – 30-40 years old, 1.70 m (5’ 7’’), swarthy complexion, "of Magreb origin", suddenly got up and left with the girl in a black BMW "with an NL disk", meaning that it was likely from Holland, the witness said. The police went to the scene of the sighting, but never traced the child or the BMW. The girl seen in Montpellier in France in February of this year by Melissa Fiering also had a mark in her right eye. Ms Fiering, aged 18, stopped at a roadside restaurant and saw a girl very similar to the child who had gone missing in the Algarve, whose photos she had seen in the news. When she called the "Maddie" to the child, she "looked surprised". And the man who was sitting next to the child suddenly got up and took her away. After viewing CCTV footage from the scene, police, however, concluded that this was a different child. On 16 May this year, a man named Trevor Francis says he saw the girl on the Venezuelan island of Margarita. "She had a blemish in her right eye. I am 85% sure that it was her." Gerry was also in a "sighting" On 26 May, Martin Smith, an Irishman described by the Leicestershire police as a "decent" man who was not looking for fame, came to Portugal to give a statement to the PJ and tell them what he saw on the night of 3 May 2007, at around 10.00 p.m., in a street in Praia da Luz: a man carrying a child in his arms, with the child's head resting on the man's left shoulder. The image he saw: a man approximately 175 to 180 cm tall (5’ 9’’ to 5’ 11’), 34/35 years old, short brown hair, and carrying a blonde girl wearing pyjamas "roughly four years of age", has never gone out of his head, he said. On 20 September, the Irishman once again contacted the authorities. He was "distressed", going on to explain that when he saw the McCanns on the TV news on 9 September getting off the plane that had just landed in England, now as "arguidos" he sensed that he was witnessing a "repeat of the events of the night" on which he had seen the man "carrying the child back in Portugal". The way Gerry was carrying one of his children, Sean, whose head was resting on his shoulder, was "exactly" the same way the unidentified man in Portugal carried his child. The PJ asked for more information. On 23 January Mr. Smith gave another statement to the police in Drogheda, Ireland. He repeated that he was 60 to 80 per cent sure that the man he had seen carrying a child in Praia da Luz was Gerry. In the final report on the investigation, the PJ guarantee, however, that at the time Smith says he saw Gerry in the street, Madeleine's father was sitting at the table in the Tapas restaurant in the Ocean Club. Inspector thought that "all of them" were lying The police wanted to find out everything about the McCanns from the very beginning of the investigation. What they had eaten, the colour of the clothes they had on, what they had with them, what they were wearing, the arrangement of the furniture in the apartment they had rented in the Ocean Club, if they had left windows or doors open. And at what times they did what. Everything they could remember, the most minute details of the day on which their daughter Madeleine disappeared. Kate and Gerry and all members of the group that dined in the resort restaurant (the Tapas) on 3 May while their children slept in their apartments, gave their version of the facts, a very consistent version. But, with time, the police detected "little distortions of the information they had initially given and one could register slight alterations to the truth, affecting the investigation and the direction they would force it to take