Portugal prays for missing toddler as police investigation comes under attack
Monday, 7 May 2007
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Portugese worshippers in the holiday village of Praia da Luz rallied yesterday in an emotional show of support for the English couple whose infant daughter is missing.
Prayers were held for three-year-old Madeleine McCann during a Mother's Day service in the local church, with her parents Kate and Gerry McCann, who are Roman Catholics, in the congregation.
But there were recriminations in the Portugese media over the police's handling of the investigation in the first few hours after Madeleine's disappearance.
The Portugese daily Diario de Noticias claimed that border police were not told that a child had been kidnapped until about midday on Friday, more than 12 hours after Madeleine was reported missing.
As a member of the EU, Portugal has no border controls with Spain, and motorists can cross from one country to the other unchecked. The newspaper claimed that proper procedure would have been for Portugal's Judicial Police - the local equivalent of CID - to have tipped off the Borders and Aliens Service as soon as they knew that a child had been kidnapped.
Another paper, Correio de Manha, said the main border crossing from the Portuguese Algarve to Spain had no special controls in place until Saturday afternoon.
But the Portugese police believe that Madeleine is being held close to where she was kidnapped, and that she is alive. About 150 officers were continuing the search for her yesterday.
In the village church, the priest, Father Jose Manuel Pachedo, announced in English that there would be a prayer for Madeleine, and her family. Mrs McCann, who was in tears, was presented with a bunch of roses, marking Mother's Day, by an altar girl.
At the end of the service, attended by the British ambasador to Portugal, John Buck, a line of elderly women approached the McCanns to hug and kiss them. The couple were soon surrounded by a crowd of 30 well-wishers, many in tears.
In the UK, the distraught parents were criticised in internet chat rooms for allowing their children to be out of their sight. They were having dinner in a tapas bar 50 yards away when Madeleine disappeared, but were going back every half hour to check the apartment where their three children were sleeping.
Somebloggers taking part in discussions threads on the internet since the news broke have claimed that as well-paid professionals the couple should have known better than to leave the children unsupervised. Mr McCann is a consultant cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, where his wife is a GP.
They were vigorously defended yesterday by the head of the company that runs the resort where Madeleine was abducted. David Hopkins, managing director of Mark Warner, told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend: "The McCanns have done nothing that I'm sure many parents wouldn't have done in the same instance, which is whilst keeping a very close eye on their children who are not far away, go out and enjoy a meal on a holiday in a very safe environment."
Madeleine, from Rothley, Leicestershire, who will be four on Saturday, was snatched from her bed in a ground floor apartment. She was sharing a room with her two-year-old twin brother and sister. Her father checked the room at 9.30pm, and saw all three children asleep. When their mother checked half an hour later, the older girl was missing, and a window had been forced.
Police said that witnesses saw a man with a girl who may have been Madeleine, and that they have an artists' impression of a suspect.
Portugese authorities were accused by an international child protection group yesterday of allowing high level corruption to impede investigations of paedophiles and child traffickers. Homayra Sellier, who founded Innocence in Danger, under Unesco auspices, in 1999, said that in Portugal "the corruption has gone so high that there's nothing we can do".
She said that her group, based in Switzerland, had tried to set up an office in Portugal between 2002 and 2004. "I stopped it because I thought I couldn't fight against a country where the people do not want to know the truth," she added.
