The Madeleine Foundation

Asking the questions about what really happened to Madeleine McCann

Note: This notice has been updated following our Goncalo Amaral Awareness Day held on 17 July and edited as a result of representations by the McCanns’ libel lawyers, Carter-Ruck.  Updated passages of this notice are shown in red.

Registered address:        66 Chippingfield, HARLOW, Essex CM17 0DJ

Wednesday 10 June 2010

Dear Member/Supporter

We write to bring to your notice our new campaign, titled ‘The Goncalo Amaral Support Project’, or G.A.S.P. for short. The campaign includes the establishment of a national Goncalo Amaral Day, and awareness day in support of Mr Amaral, leaflets, a new website, and even a new booklet about him.

Why is G.A.S.P. needed?
Before giving you the details, why did we set up our new campaign on behalf of Mr Amaral? Our reasons include:

• The fact that without his book, A Verdade da Mentira (‘The Truth About A Lie’) there is much important information surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine McCann that otherwise we would not know
• The enormous and sustained pressure that has been put on him by the following legal events:

• his prosecution and wrongful conviction (currently the subject of an appeal) for allegedly filing a false report in a criminal matter. He had earlier been accused of conspiring to torture Leonor Cipriano into making a false confession, but that charge was thrown out 
• the McCanns successfully banning his book from sale in Portugal and, after the book had been openly sold for a year, suing Mr Amaral for alleged libel, claiming £1 million
• a further threatened prosecution of him for allegedly forcing a false confession out of Leandro da Silva, Leonor Cipriano’s partner.

• serious and unaccountable delays in arranging hearings in each of the above cases, suggesting possible high-level political interference, which has caused Mr Amaral significant extra expense
• a serious and continuing delay in arranging a hearing of his appeal against conviction for allegedly filing a false report.

The McCanns claim that Goncalo Amaral severely libelled them in his book, A Verdade da Mentira (‘The Truth About A Lie’). In a letter to us dated 15 July 2010, the McCanns’ lawyers, Carter-Ruck, made the following comments:
“Mr Amaral is well known for having espoused the view that Madeleine McCann died in our clients’ holiday apartment, and that our clients covered up her death to evade any liability. This is, of course, a central thesis of his book: ‘The Truth About A Lie’. This theory is, however, completely untrue [underlining by Carter Ruck] and simply does not withstand proper scrutiny’.

We must emphasise that the libel action against Mr Amaral has yet to be decided by the Portuguese courts. It was over a year ago that the McCanns filed their legal action against Mr Amaral. So far as we are aware, the Portuguese courts have not yet set a date for the final hearing of the McCanns’ libel claim.  

The McCanns are able to employ the services of  one of the most expensive libel lawyers in the world. No-one knows how they are able to afford this since only one of them is now working. They say that monies donated from the public are not being used to pay Carter-Ruck. If they are not paying for Carter-Ruck themselves, they must have another source of funding that they have not yet disclosed.

By contrast, Mr Amaral has to fund his own defence, which is very extensive. Mr Amaral, as a defendant, has his rights. The Portuguese courts have not yet said whether his book is libellous or not. We would therefore recommend British people to support the PJGA project, which is designed to help him raise funds to defend himself.

Goncalo Amaral Day

We have decided to declare 2 October each year as ‘Goncalo Amaral Day’, in honour of a man who has put the pursuit of truth above his personal and career interests. We have chosen 2 October because this was the day in 2007 when the powers-that-be in Portugal removed him, for reasons that are yet to be made fully clear, from his role as the senior investigating officer into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. It also happens to be his birthday.

We hope this will become recognised here and elsewhere as a day when we can pay tribute to and support Mr Amaral in any way that we can. This year we plan a lobby of Parliament in support of Mr Amaral at around that date and we also hope to hold a fund-raising event, possibly in Birmingham, on Saturday 2 October.      

Goncalo Amaral Awareness Day

We have declared Saturday 17 July ‘Goncalo Amaral Awareness Day’. We have produced a new leaflet in support of Mr Amaral (see below) and we would like your help please in distributing as many of these as you can, on that day, or during the week before.

Because of representations by Carter-Ruck, we have decided to remove that downloadable leaflet from our website and remove its content from other pages on our website.Prior to today, successful leaflet distributions were carried out in the following areas of the United Kingdom, and also by our former Chairman in Wyoming, U.S.A., where he is currently on holiday:

Birmingham
Borehamwood
Bristol
Cardiff
Devon
Elstree
Harlow
Hayes
Hazel Grove
Hull
London
Rhondda Cynon Taff
Southampton
Stockport
Uxbridge
West Cumbria

Goncalo Amaral Leaflet: “Your Questions Answered About Goncalo Amaral” 

In the light of representations from Carter-Ruck, we have removed the contents of our leaflet from our website, and removed the downloadable pdf. version. In addition we are no longer sending out copies of the leaflet. These decisions are all made pending the rfeceipt of legal advice about whether our leaflet about Mr Amaral can fairly be held to be libellous, as the McCanns claim it is. 

Goncalo Amaral Website 

We already have a dummy website in support of Mr Amaral in an advance state of preparation. If you’d like to have a look at it in its draft stage, please ask us.

Goncalo Amaral Booklet  

We are currently writing a booklet about Mr Amaral which is our tribute to the work of Goncalo Amaral. It will include a short biography (there is already one on our website), explain his actions in the Madeleine McCann case, and describe the severe opposition he has faced ever since he pulled in the McCanns for questioning on 7 September 2007 and made them suspects. If you have any ideas for what should go into the booklet or would like your personal message of support for him included, please contact us. We plan to give out a complimentary copy of the booklet to all those who support our Goncalo Amaral initiatives: our leafleting, our fund-raising lunch, and our proposed lobby of Parliament.  

Financial Support for Goncalo Amaral

Possibly the most important way of supporting Mr Amaral is financially. There is a PayPal website where donations can be made to Mr Amaral, run by his friend Paulo Sargento, here is the link:

We plan fund-raising initiatives ourselves and will forward the proceeds directly to Mr Amaral. We began our donations to him with a payment to him of 578.35 euros (£500) earlier this month.

Further suggestions

If you have any other practical ideas on how we in Britain could best support Mr Amaral in all his trials, please contact us. He has fought for justice and truth on behalf of a British girl, while others seem to have been more concerned with covering up the truth. Let us support him as he bears the consequences of his decision to share with us all  his information on the Madeleine McCann investigation.

Thanks for reading this.

Sincerely,

The Committee of The Madeleine Foundation