Parents of Madeleine McCann unhappy at 'crying' leak
Friday, 11 Apr 2008 08:27
McCanns unhappy at leaking of transcripts of interviews with Portuguese police
The parents of Madeleine McCann have labelled the leaking of transcripts of interviews with Portuguese police as a smear campaign.
The leaked documents revealed that on the morning of May 3rd last year - the day she went missing from the Mark Warner holiday complex in Praia da Luz, Portugal - Madeleine had asked her mother why she had not come to tend to the children when they had been crying on the previous night.
The revelation was made on the Spanish television programme Ana Rosa Quintana which had acquired copies of the Policia Judiciaria's interviews with Kate and Gerry McCann but has since been labelled a "blatant" attempt at smearing the reputation of the family.
In her first interview following Madeleine's disappearance, Kate McCann said: "While we were having breakfast, Madeleine said: 'Mum, why didn't you come when we were crying last night?'."
She added: "Gerry and I talked about it for several minutes and decided to watch over the children more carefully at night."
Kate and Gerry McCann's spokesman Clarence Mitchell has criticised the leak, which comes while the couple are in Brussels promoting a Europe-wide missing child alert system, and called for an investigation as the publicisation of the transcripts breaches Portuguese privacy law.
"Kate and Gerry have been utterly honest and utterly open with the police and all of their statements from the moment that Madeleine was taken," he explained.
"The very fact that the comment from Madeleine is now in the public domain is entirely because they themselves told the police about it at the time.
"It is more than curious that this comment, taken in isolation and out of context, that has been in the police file for some 11 months, should now emerge on the very day that they are in Brussels trying to improve children's welfare and child safety."