Brian Kennedy’s man in Morocco:

António Jimenez - the McCann Team’s man

who ended up (like Kevin Halligen) in custody

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive” -  Shakespeare

by Tony Bennett for The Madeleine Foundation,  12 July 2011

Copyright statement: This work is the original work of Tony Bennett and the Madeleine Foundation and is protected by copyright laws as per the Berne Convention, save for those parts which are reproduced directly from other sources. Reproduction of our material is welcome provided acknowledgement is made to The Madeleine Foundation and that use of our material is not made for commercial gain. 

A note about António Jimenez:  This article refers to the arrest in February 2008 of António Jimenez from Método 3 on serious criminal charges and his immediate detention in custody pending further investigation. We have been unable to find out whether Jimenez was ever charged with the offences he was arrested for, nor, if he was charged, whether he was found guilty. The Madeleine Foundation would appreciate information from anyone who has further information on the matter. Meanwhile, of course, people are in the eyes of the law innocent until proven guilty.

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to all those who have translated material used in this article from Portuguese or Spanish into English and others who have given us their comments on this article.  Responsibility for any errors is ours.

The character Lady Bracknell, in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, says to another character in his play: “To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness”.

Paraphrasing this and applying it to the murky world of the McCann Team’s private investigations, we might well say: “To have one of your lead investigators end up being banged up in jail, Mr Kennedy, may look like misfortune. But for two of them to end up behind bars looks like carelessness”.

But that would be to be too kind by far to the McCann Team. They pumped the general public for money to ‘find Madeleine’, which was willingly and generously given by tens if not hundreds of thousands, even by children donating their weekly pocket money and pensioners donating their weekly pensions.

Yet in successive years, their two top investigators, António Jimenez (2008) and Kevin Halligen (2009) were both locked up in prison, in each case awaiting serious charges.

António Jimenez was bundled into custody on suspicion of being behind a major drugs theft - of 1,100 lb. of cocaine, with an estimated value of £25 million.

A year later, Kevin Halligen was whisked away from a £700-a-night Oxfordshire hotel, where he had been spending his ill-gotten gains from the Find Madeleine Fund, which by some estimates was well over £500,000. He was incarcerated in Belmarsh High Security Prison awaiting trial for an estimated $2 million dollar (£1,300,000) fraud.

How could it possibly be that the McCanns and their team could make two such appalling appointments? Their financial backer, Brian Kennedy, a highly successful businessman, ‘serial deal-maker’ according to one newspaper and a man who, in his own words, ‘plays to win’, made these choices. Yet neither man has come up with even one jot of information about who might have abducted Madeleine McCann or where she might have been taken – always assuming that she was abducted, that is.

I think I’ll paraphrase that line from Oscar Wilde a different way: “To have one of your lead investigators end up in prison looks very much like something is wrong. To lose two of your lead investigators in this way makes it  virtually certain that something is wrong”.     
  

The McCann Team, during 2007,  hired private detectives, supposedly to search for the whereabouts of Madeleine McCann. We now know that the secretive Control Risks Group, with close links to the government and security services, were employed by or on behalf of the McCanns from the very first days, exerting a powerful influence on the investigation in the early days, including the pulling in for questioning of Robert Murat on 14 May 2007, just 11 days after Madeleine had been reported missing. We say more about this in our feature article about Robert Murat, on our website.

Brian Kennedy appoints Método 3

Then, as we know, they hired the controversial, Barcelona-based Método 3 detective agency, possibly in mid-September or even before then.

26 September The Times   A source close to the McCanns’ legal team has confirmed the involvement of Control Risks Group (CRG), but insisted that it is simply providing advice on the search for Madeleine. He said: “You can assume that they are doing some things that the Portuguese police can’t do.” Private investigators unconnected to CRG are believed to be already working in Morocco, Portugal and Spain.

The key decision to appoint Método 3 appears to have been taken by Brian Kennedy, the Cheshire-based businessman who, also in September, announced that he would help to fund and run the search for Madeleine McCann.  Soon after that announcement, he bought premises in Knutsford which have been used to house Kennedy’s private investigation operation (on behalf of the McCanns Team and the Trustees of the Find Madeleine Fund) ever since. Its exact location has always been kept a secret by the McCann Team, but we have obtained details of where it is based.

Método 3’s boss was the controversial Francisco Marco, son of its founder, Maria Fernandez Lado, who, in 1995, nine years after Método 3 was founded, was arrested, along with several other family members, on suspicion of being involved in illegal ’phone tapping and other criminal activity. In the end, charges were not pressed against her and the others. Marco became notorious in the British press in December 2007 for making extravagant, indeed false claims that he and his team ‘knew where Madeleine was’ and that she would be ‘home by Christmas’.

Two people, above all, helped Francisco Marco in his efforts on behalf of Brian Kennedy and the McCann Team.

The role of lawyer Marcos Aragao Correia

 

One was the strange lawyer from Madeira, Marcos Aragão Correia, who first came to the notice of the British public in January 2008, when he was portrayed as ‘a good Samaritan’ who was organising, at his own expense, a search of the Arade Dam in southern Portugal for Madeleine’s body. Those who have read our two in-depth articles on Marcos Aragão Corriea will know that the truth is very different. He states that he was employed and instructed to search the Arade Dam on behalf of Método 3, who were in turn were being paid and directed by Brian Kennedy and the McCann Team.  

Marcos Aragão Correia, however, has on a number of occasions lied to the media and the public about his role and concerning his actions in the Madeleine McCann case.

He first of all made the dramatic claim that he had been tipped off by the criminal underworld, on Sunday 10 May 2007 (three days after Madeleine disappeared), that Madeleine had definitely been abducted, then raped, then killed, then her body thrown into a lake. He then boasted that he had identified the Arade Dam as the most likely place to find Madeleine’s body. He further claimed that he was funding the Arade Dam search, at a cost of well over £1,000 a day, out of his own pocket. That was a claim that the British media swallowed hook, line and sinker.

But he later admitted that his story was a lie. He then denied having been told by the criminal underworld about how Madeleine died. Instead, he made up an equally bizarre (and many would say sick) story. He said that soon after Madeleine was reported missing, he attended his first-ever Spiritualist church meeting on Madeira, on a Saturday evening. On returning home, he claimed he had had a vision of a huge man strangling Madeleine, explaining that that vision was what got him involved in the Madeleine McCann case.

One might wonder why the McCanns would want anything to do with a man like that. However, as we have covered in our two in-depth articles on Marcos Aragão Corriea, the McCann Team made very great use of him.

We now know, for example, from statements made by both Marcos Aragão Correia and by Método 3, that Correia met Método 3 at the Arade Dam on 10 December 2007, weeks before the publicity about the search of the Arade Dam. Of course, he must clearly have been in contact with them well before that meeting. We also know that Correia had tried to get in touch with the McCanns in November, possibly before. We can safely say that Método 3 and Marcos Aragão Correia, standing on the shore looking out at the Arade Dam,  were planning something.

It was nearly two months later, however, when the public was to learn what they’d been planning. And as we shall suggest throughout this article, Brian Kennedy, the director and paymaster of the McCanns’ private investigation, and the rest of the McCann Team, knew precisely what was going on - including that Método 3-Correia meeting at the Arade Dam just two weeks before Christmas 2007.

Marcos Aragão Correia also began working on behalf of the McCann Team by arranging, under mysterious circumstances, to represent child murderess Leonor Cipriano, who was prosecuting Gonçalo Amaral and four of his detectives for allegedly torturing her. Cipriano and her brother murdered her 8-year-old daughter, Joana, hid the body, then claimed she’d been abducted.    These and other disturbing aspects of Correia’s work for the McCanns were highlighted in two articles about him on our website, published in early 2010.

Correia found out about our articles and wrote to us, claimed that our articles about him were defamatory. We replied two days later, sticking by all our claims about him, but offering to correct any factual statement about him in our two articles if he could demonstrate that any were incorrect. He failed to reply. We shall say more about him and his work for the McCann Team very shortly in our forthcoming article: ‘Brian Kennedy and his role in the search for Madeleine McCann’.

But this article is about Francisco Marco’s other main man on the Madeleine McCann case, his right-hand man, and former boss of the Catalonian Anti-Kidnapping Agency, António  Jimenez.

We will examine what is known about him from press articles and from the files of the Portuguese Police in the Madeleine McCann case, which were released during the latter half of 2008.

Jimenez as Head of the Catalonian Anti-Kidnapping Unit

 

First, we know that António Jimenez had risen to become the Head of the Catalonian Anti-Kidnapping Unit [Unidad de Secuestros de la Policia Judicial] in Barcelona. Catalonia is a fiercely independent region of eastern Spain, with its own, largely autonomous, regional government.

The Unit dealt with issues such as child abduction and child trafficking. In some respects, it would do broadly similar work to that done by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) here in Britain. There are indications that he may have had at one time some other major role in the Spanish police (see below).       

Jimenez moved to Metodo 3

 

We know that he then moved to work for Francisco Marco at Método 3, but we don’t know exactly when. The indications are that this may have occurred in 2004 or 2005.

If he was the Head of a major Spanish investigation agency, and moved to Método 3, we can perhaps put forward three possible reasons for his move: (1) Método 3 would pay him even more than he was getting at the Catalonian Anti-Kidnapping Unit, (2) that he had simply resigned or (3) that he was dismissed from the Anti-Kidnapping Unit or left under a cloud. Both agencies were of course based in Barcelona. 

Jimenez heads up the Madeleine McCann investigation

 

We know from comments made by Francisco Marco, Método 3’s boss, that Marco appointed António Jimenez as the ‘head of operations’ of the agency’s actions in relation to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Quite possibly, it would have been a major ‘selling point’ by Método 3 to Brian Kennedy, back in September 2007.

For Marco to be able to say that he had the ex-Head of a Spanish Police Anti-Kidnapping Unit - a specialist in child abduction - on his staff would have sounded very impressive. We shall give further proofs of his role within Método 3 below.

Jimenez arranges a meeting between the Portuguese Police, Método 3 and Brian Kennedy

We now know, from internal documents released by the Portuguese Police in late 2008, that the Catalonian Anti-Kidnapping Unit contacted the Portuguese Police on 19 October 2007, seeking a meeting with them.

The purpose, they said, was to discuss with the Portuguese allegedly important information that Método 3 detectives had acquired about how, by whom and where Madeleine McCann might have been abducted.

Now, we know that António Jimenez was the ex-Head of the Catalonian Anti-Kidnapping Unit. It is a reasonable educated guess that the idea behind contacting the Portuguese Police at this stage would have come about because  Barcelona-based Jimenez contacted the new Head of Unit, Alberto Carbas, or at least a senior member of that Unit, who would have been his ex-colleagues there.

In the event, a meeting was duly arranged on 13 November in Portimão, Portugal, the base of the ongoing investigation into what really happened to Madeleine McCann. The Portuguese Police met Método 3. But there in  Portugal at that very meeting was the master puppeteer in all of this, Brian Kennedy.

Jimenez gives three lines of ‘evidence’ to the Portuguese Police on 13 November 2007

A meeting was duly held at Portimão Police Station on 13 November 2007. According to the police notes of the meeting, the following were present:

• Ricardo Paiva of the Portuguese Police
• Paulo Ferreira of the Portuguese Police
• Francisco Marco, boss of Método 3
• Marco’s right-hand-man, António Jimenez, and
• Cheshire businessman, Brian Kennedy, the director and paymaster of Método 3.   

 

To sum up the meeting, Brian Kennedy insisted he was just there out of his concern for abducted children and child welfare and in order to find out what had really happened to Madeleine McCann. He just wanted the truth, no matter where the truth led.

At this meeting, António Jimenez advanced three lines of evidence:

•  that a suspicious-looking man had been seen by a nanny (‘M.H.’) hanging around the same apartment as the McCanns’ apartment, in August or September 2006 (nine months before the McCanns and their friends stayed there)
•  that there had been child sexual abuse images on Sergei Malinka’s computer, seen by a couple back in 2003, and
•  that there was evidence of a woman seen handing a child to a man over a 5 foot fence, just two days after Madeleine McCann had been reported missing. 

 

The Portuguese police were not impressed with the first line of enquiry. The incident happened nine months or so before the reported disappearance of Madeleine McCann and they ruled it irrelevant.

They dismissed the second line of evidence by saying they had examined Sergei Malinka’s computer and had found nothing suspicious on it. (However, it must also be added that Malinka had apparently wiped much of his hard drive before the police got to it). 

The Portuguese Police agreed, however, to investigate the third line of evidence.

I now reproduce extracts from the memo written on 14 November (the day after the meeting) by Joao Carlos of the Portuguese Police to his Co-ordinator [Head of Investigation], one of the many documents released by the Portuguese Police in late 2008. It said:

“Please note the following concerning the investigation of the disappearance of the British girl, Madeleine McCann:

“On 19 October we were contacted by Alberto Carbas, Chief of the Kidnapping Unit from the Office of the Commissary General, in Madrid. He passed us information that the McCann family had contracted a Spanish company known as ‘Método 3’, composed of Spanish private detectives. Their investigation, or rather the costs of this investigation, were being met by a Scottish multi-millionaire whose name is Brian Kennedy whose objective is to locate the British girl.

“Alongside this information, we were asked if we were available and interested in meeting with a representative of this Spanish agency, and also with the Commissary General and Chief of the Kidnapping Unit of the Police of our neighbouring country, whose headquarters are in Madrid.
 
”Método 3 did not ask for any information regarding the investigation, nor was any offered to them, for obvious reasons. This is to be found incorporated in the Portuguese Police investigation files.
 
”On 13 November, in the presence of Inspectors Paulo Ferreira and Ricardo Paiva, a meeting was held in this department, with (a) Brian Kennedy, (b) the Director of the detective company Método 3, Francisco Marco and (c) an adviser from this same company, António Jimenez, the ex-Head of the Kidnapping Unit of Catalonia.

“At the beginning of the meeting, we asked Brian Kennedy about his role, and established from him that purpose of the meeting for him was purely charitable, in that he is interested [in helping to stop] the ill-treatment of minors and in missing children. He affirmed that he only was interested in discovering the truth and nothing more or less than the truth, even if the McCann family, their friends, or any other person connected to them were to be found to be involved in [Madeleine’s] disappearance.
 
“During the course of this meeting, the Director of Método 3 handed us a small book (attached herewith), with information relating to Madeleine’s  disappearance. This information, we were told, had been received via telephone, Método 3 having already opened a telephone ‘hot-line’ in Spain, specifically to receive and deal with information relating to [Madeleine’s disappearance]. In this book, written in Spanish, we analysed three pieces of information [offered up by Método 3]:

1. In the first case, we took note of a report of certain events which occurred in August/September of 2006. However, those occurred [before Madeleine disappeared], and in our opinion are not be related to the matter we are investigating.
2. The second set of information related to the computers of Sergei Malinka [friend of Robert Murat], but we should remember that the computers of  Malinka were searched by us and that nothing suspicious was found there, nor anything related to paedophilia.
3. Regarding the third set of information, we are currently carrying out enquiries with the intention of either confirming or disproving the information.

With nothing more to report,  Joao Carlos, Inspector”

Attached to this report was the following information about the third line of enquiry suggested by Método 3:

QUOTE

The third report provided by Método 3 is of more interest to us. It referred to a witness who said he saw a woman handing over what he was convinced was a child, wrapped in a blanket or a sheet, to a man, over a fence, with two cars parked close to them, near a city 100 miles from the Algarve. The witness was a Portuguese truck driver, identified as ‘ M.G.’. He was given several pictures of women to look at and picked out Michaela Walczuk, Murat’s girlfriend, as bearing a resemblance to the woman he had seen handing over something”.

UNQUOTE

Walczuk’s photo was ‘the most similar’ to the woman he had seen. The British media had on 19 November published a broadly similar story, but with different details. The account in the Metro ran: “A witness is said to have spotted Mr Murat's German-born girlfriend Michaela Walczuk in a car with Maddie in central Portugal on May 5”. The Daily Mail  carried a similar story , the same day: “A new witness has identified Michaela Walczuk as a woman seen with the missing girl in central Portugal about 100 miles from where she disappeared”.

When details of the investigations into the alleged sighting of a woman handing over a child to a man were first made public, Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ chief reputation manager, said: “We will not comment on any active line of the investigation other than to say we are encouraged that our investigators appear to be making progress. Kate and Gerry are not ruling anything in or out.” 

There is evidence, however, that this whole story about a claimed sighting of Walczuk came from the McCann Team in the first place. It seems to have suited their agenda at the time. We shall say more about this below.

The Portuguese Police soon investigated this incident, arranging to question the Portuguese truck driver. But the facts he reported to the police were somewhat different from those supplied by António Jimenez at the meeting at Portimão on 13 November. His evidence was that he saw the woman handing something to the man, over the fence, wrapped in what seemed to be a blanket. It was not heavy, because they did it easily and the fence was around 5’ high [1.6 metres]. Asked by the police if the package could have been the body of a child, he said that nothing that he had seen would point to that.

Questioned about his alleged positive identification of Michaela Walczuk as per the Método 3 report, the truck driver witness told the police that he couldn't see the face of the woman, as he was driving his truck at around 45-50mph [70/80 km per hour], and the couple was at a good distance from him. He had only picked out Michaela's picture from the other pictures that Método 3 had showed him because the woman ‘had the same hair colour and a similar build’.

Further details of this meeting, and of the private meeting later in the same day between Brian Kennedy, Robert Murat and others, are given in our lengthy article about Robert Murat (‘From Arguido to Applause’) on our website, and will be covered in a forthcoming in-depth look at Brian Kennedy by our colleague Seamus McGuigan, so we won’t repeat them all here.

We might just add, though, that it is more than likely that Kennedy would have used the occasion of his meeting with the Portuguese Police to also have an in-depth discussion with his two chosen investigators, Francisco Marco and António Jimenez. 

He would have reviewed their ‘achievements’ to date. He would have discussed future plans with them. He would have given them orders. For instance, it was less than four weeks after 13 November that two members of  Método 3 - we may assume that it was Francisco Marco and António Jimenez once again - met with Madeira lawyer Marcos Aragão Correia at the Arade Dam. This was on 10 December, according to Corriea, who has also said a number of times that he was paid by Método 3. It seems clear that the three of them were at that stage actively discussing looking for Madeleine’s remains in that dam - for two months later, a highly publicised search of the dam by a diving team hired by Marcos Aragão Correia took place. Seamus McGuigan will explore these matters in greater depth in his article on Brian Kennedy.

Suffice it to say, then, that the Portuguese Police thought the first incident that António Jimenez of Método 3 reported to them was irrelevant to their investigation, they said that they had already checked Sergei Malinka’s computer and found nothing suspicious on it, but they did agree to investigate Método 3’s claims about the woman having been seen handing over a child, two days after Madeleine’s disappearance.

Importantly for the McCann Team at this time, this incident, quite definitely, put Robert Murat and his girlfriend Michaela Walczuk in the frame as the possible abductors of Madeleine. It is all the more astonishing, therefore, that Brian Kennedy, having heard in person his chosen two Método 3 detectives, António Jimenez and Francisco Marco, firmly place Robert Murat and Michaela Walczuk in the frame, should - later that very same day - have a cosy dinner in the company of Murat, his mother, and his uncle and aunt Ralph and Sally Eveleigh at their villa near Praia da Luz.

We are fully entitled, without in any way breaching Britain’s relatively strict libel laws, to ask this question:

Why would Brian Kennedy attend a meeting with two top Portuguese detectives on the Madeleine McCann case, and very deliberately suggest that Madeleine McCann may have been abducted by Robert Murat and Michaela Walczuk, only to then, hours later, sit down at a dinner party with the leading suspect in the case, Murat himself, and someone whom his well-paid detectives, Francisco Marco and António Jimenez, had also identified as involved in Madeleine’s disappearance?

It might be held to be libellous for us to offer a considered and obvious answer to that question, but it badly needs answering if we are to understand what really happened to Madeleine McCann. 

Kennedy claimed to the Portuguese Police that his motive for getting involved in the Madeleine McCann case was pure and altruistic, a ‘genuine search for the truth’, wherever it might lead.

When news leaked out about his dinner party with the Murats, Kennedy  claimed that he was there simply to find out from Murat what really happened to Madeleine McCann and to ask for his help in finding her.

The fact, however. that Kennedy brought his Latium group in-house lawyer, Freemason Edward Smethurst, to the meeting - and that Robert Murat brought his lawyer, Francisco Pagarete, to the same meeting - might suggest that these strange meetings on 13 November 2007 had some other purpose.

Particularly as his own chosen men from Método 3 had been planting stories in the media hostile to him, accusing him of involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.  

Kennedy has been described as a ‘serial deal-maker’ and a man, in his own words, who ‘plays to win’.

Was he making a deal?

What ‘game’ was he trying to win?          

Witnesses paid by Método 3 to say they had seen Madeleine McCann

On 2 February 2009, on the SOSMaddie website, an article by Duarte Levy & A. Finkelstein informed us of an extremely serious allegation made against Método 3, namely that one of Francisco Marco's close associates at Método 3, António Jimenez, had been accused of having taken several British journalists to meet witnesses, who had apparently been paid in advance to say that they had seen Madeleine in Morocco.

We discuss this further below and readers are referred in this respect to the Daily Mail article on 3 November 2007 about the Madeleine McCann case which we reproduce below in full in an Appendix.         

The Método 3 ‘Hazelnut Scam’

 

In the same SOSMaddie article by Duarte Levy & A. Finkelstein, headed, ‘Método 3 under investigation in a case of embezzlement and money laundering’, we were informed that:

“Método 3, the Catalan detective agency hired by [the McCanns] to look for their daughter Madeleine, is today cited in a large scale investigation launched by the Spanish authorities involving six Ministers of the Generalitat of Catalonia (the Catalonia Autonomous Regional Government). According to a memo from the prosecutor's office, the Catalan government has in recent years commissioned and paid for a significant number of reports that seem to have no purpose or interest”.

One example quoted was that of 30,000 euros (around £27,000) paid to Método 3 for an apparently unnecessary ‘socio-economic enquiry on hazelnut farming’.

The investigation into Método 3 and other companies involved allegations of embezzlement and money laundering. The investigation followed accusations by the so-called ‘Clean Hands Collective’, which was combating corruption and government overspending, rather as our Taxpayers’ Alliance does in Britain today.

The socialist Agriculture Adviser, Joaquim Llena, had asked Francisco Marco to carry out the ‘socio-economic’ hazelnut enquiry.

The investigators from the Generalitat of Catalonia were reported as trying to ascertain ‘the real purpose behind Joaquim Llena’s engagement of Método 3’.

The article continued: “According to a source close to the investigation, the Método 3 report, about the Tarragona region, was cut-and-pasted word for word from an internet report on the hazelnut industry in the regional magazine El Confidencial”.
February 2008: Metodo 3 detective (António Jimenez) arrested in connection with multi-million drugs theft
In late February, a series of reports appeared in the British press about the arrest of António Jimenez on suspicion of involvement in a major crime. I reproduce extracts from some of them here.
On 24 February 2008, the Daily Telegraph reported:
QUOTE
A retired policeman linked to the private detective agency hired to find Madeleine McCann has been arrested on suspicion of helping criminals who stole £25 million of cocaine.
António Jimenez, who has been linked to Método 3, the Spanish detective agency hired by the McCann family to find their missing daughter, was last night remanded in custody by a judge investigating alleged police corruption and the theft in 2005 of 1,100 lb [about half a ton] of cocaine from a Barcelona dockyard.
The arrest comes amid mounting scepticism about the role of Metodo 3 in the search for Madeleine, who disappeared on May 3 last year while on holiday with her family in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
Método 3, whose contract with Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry expires next month and has yet to be renewed, was criticised last year when Francisco Marco, its managing director, spoke of finding the four-year-old by Christmas.
It has also emerged that, in 1995, five senior members of the agency were arrested in a phone-tapping case. They were never charged, however, and an investigating judge threw out the case, condemning police entrapment.

Clarence Mitchell, the spokesman for the McCanns, sought to distance Jimenez from Método 3. He said: “He is nothing to do with us. He collaborated with Método 3 on a project, but that was two years before the company was hired to find Madeleine. We still have faith in the work of Metodo 3”.

Mr Marco denied Spanish television reports that Jimenez, 53, had worked for Método 3 for three years. He insisted that Jimenez was, until three weeks ago, a business partner of his mother, Maria Fernandez Lado, who founded Metodo 3. He said Jimenez had been involved with a separate company. Spanish records, however, reportedly showed that this business had the same listed address as Método 3.

UNQUOTE

The Daily Mail the following day added some details:
“The half a ton of cocaine was stolen from a container docked in Barcelona in 2005…Spanish police had the container under surveillance following a tip-off.  Jimenez, then a Chief Inspector with the Drugs and Organised Crime Unit of the National Police, is suspected of providing vital information to the gang. He retired from the police shortly afterwards.
“The cocaine was smuggled into Spain in 974 packets on the ship Hispanota, which was transporting frozen prawns from Venezuela. It docked in Barcelona in November 2004 and the drugs were taken on January 24, 2005. Five officers from the Civil Guard have also been arrested and remanded in custody. A serving police officer has been arrested and released on bail”.
The Mail article was useful in pinpointing the moment at which António Jimenez left his senior police job and began working for Método 3 as around the first half of 2005.
A News of the World report added still more detail: “António Jimenez allegedly tipped off a gang about the drugs cache in Barcelona docks when he was a police chief...Retired cop António Jimenez, 53, was remanded by a Barcelona judge investigating a massive Spanish police corruption scandal”.

Two reports by Duarte Levy on the SOSMaddie website, dated respectively 23 February and 8 March 2008, and translated by a Spanish lady, Mercedes, into English, added a few more details.

In the first article, Levy wrote, boldly: “This man, Antonio J.R., aged 53, who has been arrested for theft of cocaine, is the same man who ‘discovered’ witnesses who said they had seen Madeleine.  He held the position of Chief Inspector of the Drugs and Organised Crime Unit (UDYCO) of the Barcelona Police, at the time of the alleged offences.

“He had left the police and straightaway began to work for Metodo 3 as the right-hand man of boss Francisco Marco , at the precise moment that an internal investiagtion within the Spanish police had begun into the  disappearance of 1,100 lbs (400 kilos) of cocaine, out of a total of a ton and a half, which had been seized by police [in late 2004] from a ship from Venezuela.

“The Court of First Instance in Marorell (Barcelona) ordered his preventive detention in custody, with no right of appeal. Jimenez weas accused of theft, corruption in a public office, and illicit criminal association. It was Jimenez who was in charge of special operations in the case of the privzte  investigations into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

“He went to both Morocco and Portugal,  announcing that there were several witnesses who stated they had seen Madeleine.

Levy’s report of 8 March added the following details:  “Jimenez paid witnesses in Morocco, who would say they had seen Madeleine in Morocco. The accusation was made by a source in the Moroccan Security services, responsible for the interrogation of witnesses in the Kingdom, where the authorities questioned the working practices of Método 3.

“The detention of Jimenez, one of the private detectives working for the McCanns, reinforces the suspicions of the authorities with respect to the work of Método 3. One of the witnesses questioned by the Moroccan security services admitted having received several thousands of euros from the Spanish detective, who had told him/her to keep the arrangement secret ‘so as not to affect the investigations”. Jimenez, said Levy, had met several witnesses who stated they had seen Madeleine in the north of the country.

“He also organised meetings between the newspapers and the witnesses. In November 2007, at a meeting with the General Assembly of Interpol in Marrakesh, the Moroccan Minister of the Interior, Chakib Benmoussa, stated that:  “There is no reason to believe that little Madeleine McCann could be in Morocco”.

 

These reports passed without any signficant comment in the mainstream British press, but we must make several observations on them.

The articles claimed that Jimenez was ‘linked’ to Método 3. This appears to be ‘spin’ from Método 3 and the McCann Team, who had come up with the claim that Jimenez was merely a ‘business associate’ of Francisco Marco’s. He was much more than ‘linked’!

He was clearly appointed by Marco to head up the Madeleine McCann investigation.

He was the right-hand man of Marco.

He was at Marco’s side as the two of them met the Portuguese Police and Brian Kennedy at Portimao on 13 November 2007.

And he had been in Morocco, leading the McCann Team’s actions there, and had apparently been involved in bribing witnesses to say they had seen Madeleine McCann. We shall now turn to Jimenez’s actions in Morocco.

António Jimenez travels to Morocco with Naoual Malhi to find Madeleine

An article in the Daily Mail on 3 November 2007 was amongst a number of articles confirming António Jimenez’ deep involvement in Método 3’s enquiries, and we reproduce the entire report in an Appendix (below). This article featured a claimed ‘sighting’ of Madeleine by a Moroccan ex-pat living in Spain, by the name of Naoual Malhi. She was aged 24 and a divorcee, described by the Mail as ‘a much Westernised Moroccan who wears fashionable clothes and lives in an ex-pat British community on the Costa del Sol with her own four-year-old daughter, Ines’. She had ‘avidly followed the saga’ of Madeleine’s disappearance. She claimed to have seen Madeleine in the north Moroccan village of Fnideq, just across the Mediterranean from Gibraltar. The Mail informed us she was ‘a qualified Doctor’, adding that ‘she says she hails from a well-to-do family from Fez, Morocco's religious and cultural capital’.

Naoual Mahli then explains how she spotted a Berber couple with a pale-skinned young child in Fnideq market, then followed them to a taxi. She tried to get in the taxi with them, but they refused.

The Mail article continued: “Naoual, though, had the presence of mind to get the driver's ’phone number. She later called him to discover where he had driven the pair, then alerted the Spanish police. They came to see Naoual, and on October 6 she was contacted by Método 3, the Spanish private detective agency hired at great expense by the McCanns to trace Madeleine - or at least discover what happened to her”.

The main, and vital, question we need to ask here is: how did Método 3 contact Naoual Mahli?

Here is a very possible scenario. For one reason or another, she had got in touch with Método 3 before contacting the Spanish police. Método 3 had then told her to contact the Spanish police.

However, the article leads us to suggest that this came the other way about, saying: ‘[Naoual] alerted the Spanish police…they came to see Naoual…on 6 October she was contacted by Método 3’. The implication there is that the Spanish police leaked the details of this claimed ‘sighting’ to Método 3. It is not made clear in the article whether, for example, the Spanish police contacted the Moroccan police to follow up this sighting, or contacted the Portuguese Police investigation in Portimao.     

The origin of Método 3 contacting Naoual Mahli is not clear from the Mail article.

However, what is clear is the enthusiasm with which Método 3 then developed this sighting. As the Mail article tells us:

“But Método 3's seasoned investigators did not lightly dismiss Naoual's story. They were excited to have found someone who claimed to have seen the now-famous ‘flash’ in Madeleine's iris. After interviewing her at length, they asked her to return with them to Morocco”.

That paragraph warrants comment.

First, were Método 3’s investigators ‘seasoned’?  As we have set out in other articles on our website, their claimed expertise was only in company and commercial matters, especially fraud. They claimed to have had a 100% success rate in solving 23 separate ‘missing children’ cases, but could not even substantiate even one of those cases. A succession of journalists visited Método 3’s spanking new premises in Barcelona and found no evidence of a high-profile, active investigation; very much the reverse. The Mail’s claim that they were ‘seasoned’ seems very wide of the mark.   

Second, why were Método 3 so ‘excited’ about this ‘sighting’? They presumably  travelled all the way from Barcelona to the Costa del Sol to see Naouli Malhi to carry out their ‘lengthy interview’ with her. Could they not have left this to the Portuguese and Moroccan Police to investigate between them? Did they really need to travel all that way to see her?

Next we learn from the Mail that: “…earlier this month [we think the Mail must mean October, though their report is dated November], Naoual quietly slipped back to her home country with a Método 3 team led by António Jimenez, the former head of Spain's national organised crime squad [my italics]. They spent a week trying to track down Madeleine…”

The Mail’s two statements about António Jimenez are absolutely categoric. And we must remember that the source for this whole story is Método 3 itself.

First, the Método 3 team in Morocco was led by António Jimenez.

Second, he was ‘the former head of Spain’s national organised crime squad’. This is different from saying he was the Head of Catalonia’s Anti-Kidnapping Unit, so it is not clear if António Jimenez at some time or other held both posts, or whether there is some confusion in the media about his precise job title. However, it seems from the reports of his arrest that we examined above that in early 2005 he suddenly resigned from heading an anti-Drugs and anti-Trafficking  police department. What is absolutely plain is that he formerly had a high profile job in the Spanish police and security services but ended up, probably during 2005, essentially as Francisco Marco’s No. 2 at Método 3.

The Mail went on to report that when Naoual Mahli and Método 3 went to Morocco, they travelled to the village of Al Hoceima, which is where the taxi-driver claimed to have taken the couple and the child believed to be Madeleine’. According to Naoual Mahli, once back in Morocco with Jimenez and his colleagues from Método 3, she “…’phoned the taxi driver, Mohamed, who told her he had driven the woman and child from Fnideq to Al Hoceima, a former Spanish garrison town nestling further east along the Mediterranean coast…a trip of 200 miles over tortuous mountain roads which would have taken five hours; the fare would have been around £180: a month’s salary for many Moroccan workers…the driver said he dropped ‘Madeleine’ and the woman at a taxi rank in the town and…told me the girl was crying throughout the journey and didn't speak Arabic. He didn't know what language she spoke in. The woman didn't say much and didn't try to comfort the girl. She told the driver she was the daughter of her sister, who lived in France”.

The Mail then informs us that: “The driver refused to meet Naoual and provide more details. Fearful of upsetting the authorities by speaking out of turn, he didn't want to get involved any further”.

The taxi controller at Fnideq is then quoted as saying: “Our drivers take people to Al Hoceima maybe once a month. They always share a car because it is so expensive”.

Then we are told by the Mail that Naoual and António Jimenez (nothing is said about anyone else) “…drove to Fez, 300 miles south-west of Al Hoceima, to request assistance from a local police chief, a family friend. Staggeringly, the high-ranking officer knew nothing about Madeleine, and so gazed blankly at her photograph. However, when they explained that she was missing, he agreed to help - though not officially. And for a fee, naturally. The officer enlisted lower ranking policemen in outlying stations, who, in turn, sent a small army of young boys to show the picture to people in the dozens of small towns and villages surrounding Fez, in the starkly beautiful Rif Mountains”.

Pausing there, we may note that earlier in the article, we are told that Naoual Malhi comes from Fez. And now here are Malhi and António Jimenez in Malhi’s home town, talking to a ‘family friend’ who is a police officer and ‘prepared to help…not officially, and for a fee, naturally’. That should have caused most journalists at least to smell a rat. Central to this ‘sighting’, as we shall see further in a moment, is a corrupt police officer who is a close friend of Ms Malhi! 

The Mail continued: Anyone who recognised Madeleine was asked to call Naoual's mobile. ‘We got hundreds of calls that week’, she recalled. ‘About 200 of them said they had spotted a girl with a woman aged around 40 wearing a chilaba headscarf. Sometimes they also said there had been a teenage girl aged between 14 and 16 with them. They thought she, too, was a Berber and looked like the woman's daughter”.

The Mail quoted Naoual Mahli  “[There were] sightings all over the north of Morocco, mostly in the area of the Rif Mountains. Some agreed to see us, but others just gave the information and hung up. There was one person, a lawyer,  who started asking for money straight away. He said he could help us but wanted 3,000 euros. We said no. Then there was a storeholder on the contraband market in Fnideq. He said he had seen the girl with the woman when she came to buy cheese and milk from his stall. He said he gave the girl a lollipop and noticed her distinctive right eye”.
 
The Mail continued: “Another elderly couple placed ‘Madeleine’ in Meknes, a northern city. They had been at a funfair with their grandchildren, and claimed to have seen the little girl crying as she dismounted from a train ride. They offered her a sweet, but she replied ‘No’ in English. Then the woman she was with ran over, grabbed her hand and pulled her away. Were all these callers simply spinning stories in the hope of a reward? Had they merely seen another Madeleine lookalike? Or had they really spotted her?”

But then the Mail tells us that there was what seemed to Método 3 and Nouala Mahli something of a breakthrough:

“Still believing Madeleine is being held in Morocco, the Metodo s team remained behind. A few days ago [end of October], Jimenez called Naoual again. He asked her to ’phone someone who had contacted him but spoke only Arabic, a language he does not understand. This caller turned out to be rather different from the rest: an articulate schools inspector from a sprawling but remote mountain village of some 15,000 people, not far from Fez. [my italics]. He said he was sitting with about 15 neighbours, and they all had the same story to tell. They had studied the circulating photograph of Madeleine carefully, and felt sure that this was the strange new girl they had seen in the village recently. She lived on the outskirts of the community with a Berber woman, aged around 40, and a teenage girl, aged around 15. Listening to the man, Naoual's pulse quickened. Everything seemed to tally…Naoual says she passed the new information to Jimenez…”

The Mail then informs us: “Naoual says she passed the new information to Jimenez, but she is not sure whether he found time to go to the village because, a couple of days later, he was back in Spain. She also informed the police in Fez, who have done nothing”.

And so it was that the intrepid Mail journalist travelled to track down this ‘schools inspector’ in the remote mountains. The Mail’s article continued with the following sequence of events:

• Naoual Mahli and a Método 3 team led by António Jimenez had spent a week in Morocco in October trying to track down Madeleine but didn’t get anywhere
• ‘This week’ [end of October/beginning of November] the Mail journalist “armed with information [Naoual Mahli] furnished to the private detectives, plus other intriguing leads that have emerged since - and a photograph of Madeleine - I travelled more than 700 miles through Morocco in an effort to uncover the truth behind her story”
• The Mail journalist went to Al Hoceima and then on to the Rif mountains south of Fez to try to track down the schools inspector
• When the Mail journalist reached the village of the schools inspector, he couldn’t talk to him as he was ‘400 miles away’: “He remained convinced that the little girl in the photo and the child who lives near the village are one and the same. Currently visiting relatives 400 miles away, he is returning home soon and is confident he can prove what he says”.

 

One observation of the Mail writers was this: “It is remarkable how many people suddenly recognise Madeleine's photograph when they scent a wad of dirham banknotes”. No doubt Método 3 was well aware off this Moroccan phenomenon.

They also stated that the mystery of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance was “the most compelling mystery in living memory”. I wouldn’t disagree.

While the details of this story are of considerable interest, and we may explore them again in a future article, the reason I have quoted so extensively from it is the very valuable information it gives us about the actions of António Jimenez. He dominates this whole story.

He gets to find out, somehow, about Naouala Malhi, whether via the Spanish police or otherwise. He then makes the journey from Barcelona to the Costa del Sol, some 1,000 miles there and back, to have a ‘lengthy’ interview with her. He then arranges to spend a week with her driving around the back roads of Morocco.

After he is back in Spain, he then ’phones and asks if she can help speak to a man in Arabic, a ‘schools inspector’, because Jimenez ‘can’t speak Arabic’. (Why doesn’t he use a professional Arabic translator? - they must have them in Barcelona).  There can be no doubt that Jimenez is conducting this whole exercise. He is in charge. His mission clearly has the authority of his boss, Francisco Marco, Director of Método 3. And in turn, Marco has the authority of his paymaster, Brian Kennedy, the McCanns, Clarence Mitchell and the rest of the McCann Team.

Was Jimenez really looking for Madeleine McCann? Or was he developing good media stories for the McCann Team as part of some huge smokescreen? There was a follow-up by the Mail to their 3 November story. On 5 November they published an article titled:

‘Madeleine detectives close in on remote farm after more Morocco sightings’

 

The report informed us that: “Investigators scouring Morocco for Madeleine McCann are preparing to narrow their search to an isolated farm in the Rif Mountains…

An isolated farm in the Rif mountains

“The move follows reports that a ‘little blonde girl’ was seen at a compound a short distance outside the town of Karia Ba Mohamed. Witnesses say they have spotted a child of about Madeleine’s age living with a woman in her 40s and a teenage girl, a report which [Método 3] detectives are said to have described as ‘highly credible’. Speaking last night, resident Majid Jazouli, 43 [the ‘schools inspector’], who claims 15 people can back up his story, said: ‘The little blonde girl was seen about a month ago at a farm on the outskirts of Karia. I sent a boy inside the compound to verify it, and he said there was a blonde girl there. I could not go in there myself because I am a stranger and that would be against our culture…’ Moroccan police appear to have been slow to respond to teacher Mr Jazouli's information so he contacted the Madeleine hotline. Private detectives working for the McCanns are now understood to have moved into the area, according to the Daily Express.

“Karia Ba Mohamed, a remote and barren Moroccan town nestling in mountains near the city of Fez, is far from the tourist traps of the country's north coast. It is home to a working-class farming community where Western faces are rarely seen. Last month, however, the attention of detectives scouring the world for the missing four-year-old was abruptly drawn to its dusty streets after a sighting by a schools inspector.

“The trail to Karia began a month ago when Naoual Malhi, a Spanish woman of Moroccan origin, claimed she saw a child with a striking resemblance to Madeleine in the Moroccan coastal resort of Findeq. She sought the help of a police chief she knew in Fes, and thousands of posters of Madeleine were distributed in the area, urging people to contact Metodo 3 investigator António Jiminez with any information.

“As a result, Mrs Malhi says Mr Jiminez was contacted by Mr Jazouli from Karia who told how a child with a striking resemblance to Madeleine had been seen in the town. The claims prompted a flurry of door-to-door inquiries last week by Karia's small police force who, like most Moroccan forces, have a dossier on Madeleine…The local police chief, who refused to give his name, angrily refuted claims that Madeleine was [in the area], and instead cruelly suggested she was dead and blamed her distraught parents for what had happened. The overweight, bald officer also boasted that there was no crime in
Karia”.

 

                            The town of Karia Ba Mohamed, Morocco

A Portuguese Police Officer leaks confidential information to a Método 3 detective 

On 13 November 2008, an important story appeared in the Portuguese newspaper 24 horas. By-lined by Luis Maneta and translated by Portuguese blogger Joana Morais, here is the entire article: 

QUOTE

‘Portuguese Police Inspector told the McCanns everything’

A former detective hired by Maddie's parents knew all the steps being taken in the [Portuguese Police] investigation. The identity of the inspector on Gonçalo Amaral's team who 'snitched' for the McCanns may soon be revealed. A former detective from the Spanish Agency Método 3 has confirmed that he had access to confidential information during the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. According to the detective, the source of  these alleged leaks is an individual from the Polícia Judiciária (PJ) who is ‘protected’ by the Director of the Faro [Police Office].

The statements given by the Método 3 man - the detective agency hired by Kate and Gerry to search for Maddie's whereabouts - were recorded in a video by the journalist Duarte Levy and will become part of a TV documentary on the subject. In the interview, the Spanish detective clearly identifies the Portuguese Police Inspector", says the journalist, adding that this statement ‘confirms the suspicions by other members of the Portuguese Police investigating team elements of the Judiciary. The detective added:  “This information allowed us to know beforehand what Inspector Gonçalo Amaral and his colleagues where going to do". He believes that, but for this individual’s leaks, the whole investigation could have a very different outcome.

Quoted by Duarte Levy, the man from Método 3 says that information leaking from the PJ investigation had many repercussions: “Several initiatives from Amaral's men failed…but there was also information coming [to Método 3] from informants who were connected to the British Embassy". The former detective stresses that the investigation was ‘doomed’, since [Método 3 and the McCann Team] had advanced knowledge of all the steps being taken by the PJ. Eventually Gonçalo Amaral began to have suspicions. Then, says the    detective, he started giving information only to his ‘trusted associates’.

The article continued: “The detective emphasised that he was ‘never’ asked to search for Maddie - he was only asked to collect information about alleged sightings. The Método 3 man says that his objective was to ‘spread the Moroccan leads far and wide to confirm that this was an abduction’.

“24 horas contacted the National Director of the PJ but they had not responded as we went to press. We were unable to contact Gonçalo Amaral”.

UNQUOTE

The report is of interest for other reasons, but if this report is right, we see the pro-active aspect of Método 3 at work. Quite possibly, for example, this information was being fed directly to Francisco Marco or António Jimenez. As far as we know, the identity of the PJ leaker has not yet been disclosed. And the Método 3 detective makes a most significant statement, namely that his role was not to find Madeleine but to help promote ‘sightings’ in order to promote the claim that Madeleine had been abducted.

The denials by Clarence Mitchell and Método 3 that António Jiminez was working for them: deliberate lies

Against that background, let us now look at the denials of Mitchell and Marco that Jimenez was in any way involved in the search for Madeleine McCann.  Both of them were no doubt very anxious to distance themselves from the highly embarrassing development of Jimenez being arrested on a major theft and drug-dealing charge.  

Mitchell had lied. A big lie at that. He said: “[Jimenez] is nothing to do with us”. Mitchell of course knew that Jimenez had been working for Brian Kennedy and the McCann Team in Morocco and that he’d been at the meeting with Brian Kennedy and the Portuguese in Portimao on 13 November.  Aware that Jiminez had been and was connected to Metodo 3, he then claimed: “He collaborated with Metodo 3 on a project, but that was two years before the company was hired to find Madeleine [i.e. in 2005]”. 

We do not know exactly when Jimenez joined Método 3. He might well have collaborated with them on a project in 2005. However, it is also certain that he was working for Metodo 3 on behalf of the McCann Team in September 2007. It is hardly surprising that the Head of the Lawyers’ Association in Portugal once said of Mitchell: ‘He lies with as many teeth as he has in his mouth’. The final paragraph of the article is fascinating. It ran: “Mr Marco denied Spanish television reports that Jimenez, 53, had worked for Método 3 for three years. He insisted that Jimenez was, until three weeks ago, a business partner of his mother, Maria Fernandez Lado, who founded Método 3. He said Jimenez had been involved with a separate company. Spanish records, however, reportedly showed that this business had the same listed address as Metodo 3”. Clearly the Spanish media had evidence of Jimenez having been working for Método 3 since at least 2005 (maybe before). Marco’s ‘get-out’ was to say that Jimenez was merely ‘a business partner of his mother’, and that he’d now stopped working for his mother.

The problem for Mitchell and Marco was this. They no doubt believed that the meeting between Brian Kennedy, Francisco Marco and Antonio Jimenez would remain secret.  They did not reckon with the Portuguese Police, in the latter half of 2008, releasing details of that meeting.When the Portuguese Police eventually released that document, the calculated lies of Clarence Mitchell and Francisco Marco were laid bare for all to see.

 

Tony Bennett, 12 July 2011

If you can supply further information relevant to this article, please e-mail me at ajsbenentt@btinternet.com

 

APPENDIX:  The Daily Mail article of 3 November 2007

 

by DAVID JONES and GERARD COUZENS
Last updated at 13:17 03 November 2007

A grim, soulless place where a dusty sea-wind whistles constantly through the narrow streets and the darkened bazaars seethe with intrigue, the Moroccan town of Fnideq is Africa's last settlement.
Just around the headland of its northern tip, beyond a chaotic, badly-policed frontier, stands Ceuta, the Spanish-owned equivalent of Gibraltar. And across the shimmering straits, so close that the houses are clearly visible, lies the jagged coastline of Europe, an El Dorado for the great many shadowy types who pass this way.
Tragically, the sight of a cute-looking child clinging forlornly to some strange adult hand is no great rarity here.

Playtime: The McCanns have issued a new photo of Madeleine as they mark six months since she went missing from their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz
In a land where small boys and girls are routinely sold as house-servants and sexual playthings, a wretched infant cargo moves stealthily from one continent to the next without attracting so much as a second glance.

Last month, however, by grace of her blonde hair, apple cheeks and a milky complexion, one little girl looked so strikingly different as she was swept along Fnideq's teeming streets in the clutches of a middle-aged Arab woman that someone finally took notice.
The curious onlooker was a 24-year-old Moroccan woman named Naoual Malhi, and - improbable as it may seem - her sharp observation and quick wits may yet provide the key to the most compelling mystery in living memory: what happened to Madeleine McCann?

Although Morocco stands so close to Spain and Portugal, few people here have heard of the four-year-old English girl who vanished from a holiday apartment six months ago.

The case is mentioned in newspapers and on TV from time to time, but, fearful of upsetting King Mohamed VI and his puppet government, editors refrain from mentioning the most enduring theory: that Madeleine is being held captive by paedophiles in Morocco.

New lead: Naoual Malhi is sure
the girl she spotted is Madeleine
Moreover, two-thirds of the population are illiterate, and most people are too busy ekeing out a meagre living to take more than a passing interest in world events.

Mrs Malhi is different, however.

A much Westernised Moroccan who wears fashionable clothes and lives in an expat British community on the Costa del Sol with her own four-year-old daughter, Ines, she has avidly followed the saga unfolding in Portugal's Praia Da Luz, five hours' drive away along the Iberian Peninsula.

And because posters bearing Madeleine's face are pinned up everywhere in the shopping mall near her apartment in Calahonda, near Malaga, she is familiar with Madeleine's distinguishing features.

Of course, Naoual Malhi, a divorcee, may turn out to be one more unsound witness. Or she could simply be mistaken in what she saw. However, she does not appear to be a crank.

Plausible and unexcitable, she is a qualified doctor and says she hails from a well-to-do family from Fez, Morocco's religious and cultural capital.

She has asked for no money in return for her information, and much of it has been verified.

It was in late September, at the end of a fortnight's holiday in Morocco, that Naoual first spotted the girl she now refers to unequivocally as ‘Madeleine’ near Fnideq's outdoor market.

Though people with fair hair and light skin colouring are not uncommon in Morocco, Naoual was struck by the incongruous sight of a Berber woman, wearing traditional Arabic clothes, carrying a beautiful, blue-eyed, ‘very blonde’ girl, dressed in jeans and an orange jumper.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail this week, Naoual described what happened after she drew up closer behind them.

“The woman spotted me looking at them and tried to hide the girl and shield her face”, she said. “But I knew, the minute I saw her close up, that it was Madeleine”.

Map: Recent 'sightings' of Madeleine in Morocco

 

 

She continued: “I'd seen her picture a thousand times, and the girl I saw was her.

“She had that distinctive right eye where the pupil runs into the iris. She was exactly the same as in the pictures, except that she had a bump like a bruise on the left side of her forehead and her hair was a lot shorter, like a boy's”.

Naoual paused, then added solemnly: “It is like me seeing my mother and knowing it is her”.

This remark was clearly meant to set the seal on her story, for Moroccans do not make reference to their parents lightly.

Smile: Madeleine by the pool on the afternoon she disappeared

She followed the pair to a taxi rank. When the woman hailed one of the dozens of rusting, six-seater Mercedes taxis in Fnideq, Naoual tried to climb in as well, for it is commonplace there for strangers to share cabs. Perhaps tellingly, however, the woman refused to allow her to ride along.

Naoual, though, had the presence of mind to get the driver's ’phone number. She later called him to discover where he had driven the pair, then alerted the Spanish police.

They came to see Naoual, and on October 6 she was contacted by Metodo 3, the Spanish private detective agency hired at great expense by the McCanns to trace Madeleine - or at least discover what happened to her.

Since she vanished, many people have come forward to report seeing her, and at least four of these ‘sightings’ have been in Morocco. The most recent turned out to be the fair-skinned, blonde-haired daughter of a Berber farmer who bore a passing similarity to Madeleine.

But Metodo's seasoned investigators did not lightly dismiss Naoual's story. They were excited to have found someone who claimed to have seen the now-famous ‘flash’ in Madeleine's iris. After interviewing her at length, they asked her to return with them to Morocco.

So, earlier this month, Naoual quietly slipped back to her home country with a Metodo team led by Antonio Jimenez, the former head of Spain's national organised crime squad. They spent a week trying to track down Madeleine.

Plainly, this latest operation has not found her. At least, not yet. The question is, did Naoual really stare into the most instantly recognisable eye in the world?

This week, armed with information she furnished to the private detectives, plus other intriguing leads that have emerged since - and a photograph of Madeleine - I travelled more than 700 miles through Morocco in an effort to uncover the truth behind her story.
Naoual and the Metodo investigators began their search with a 25-minute hydrofoil crossing from Tarifa, Spain, to Tangier. A one-way ticket costs a little over £20.

Morocco: Kate McCann visited the country as part of a tour publicising Madeleine's disappearance

This week, I also took this route to Morocco. On the wall at the ferry port, a familiar, dog-earred picture, overshadowed by a huge Wanted poster bearing the mugshots of six suspected ETA terrorists, urges anyone with information about Madeleine to call Crimestoppers. It’s written in English.

Once in Morocco, Naoual ’phoned the taxi driver, Mohamed, who told her he had driven the woman and child from Fnideq to Al Hoceima, a former Spanish garrison town nestling further east along the Mediterranean coast.

If true, it was an unusual and expensive journey. The 200-mile trip would have taken five hours over tortuous mountain roads, and the fare would have been around £180: a month’s salary for many Moroccan workers.

“Our drivers take people to Al Hoceima maybe once a month”, the taxi controller at Fnideq told me. “They always share a car because it is so expensive”.

Questioned further by Naoual, the driver said he dropped ‘Madeleine’ and the woman at a taxi rank in the town. “He told me the girl was crying throughout the journey and didn't speak Arabic”, says Naoual. “He didn't know what language she spoke in. The woman didn't say much and didn't try to comfort the girl. She told the driver she was the daughter of her sister, who lived in France”.

The driver, Naoual says, refused to meet her and provide more details. Fearful of upsetting the authorities by speaking out of turn, he didn't want to get involved any further.

Poster: Madeleine's image has been widely circulated in her parents' campaign to find her

As I discovered, this is the sort of attitude that is hampering Metodo’s inquiries in Morocco.

Apathy and the culture of bribery cause further problems.

It is remarkable how many people suddenly recognise Madeleine's photograph when they scent a wad of dirham banknotes.

Then there is the problem of national pride. Among the many ordinary Moroccans I spoke to this week, not one was willing to accept that paedophilia exists in their country.

This flies in the face of a recent UN report which stated that child brothels and sex rings operate in most of Morocco's major cities.

Three years ago 26 people were arrested when a wide-reaching paedophile network was uncovered, and last August Irishman Christopher Croft, 66, was jailed for 12 months for drugging and abusing a teenage boy.
 
Before being sent to prison, Croft lived in Taghazout, a small fishing village near Agadir which is said to have been virtually colonised by an international group of paedophiles.

According to informed sources, the group routinely abuse children as young as seven with impunity, bribing local police to turn a blind eye.

King Mohamed's ministers will doubtless point to recently-introduced tougher sentences for child sex offenders as proof that they are taking the problem seriously.

Yet at a time when foreign investment and European tourists are pouring in as never before, there remains a tendency to deny there is a problem at all.

This week, when the Mail asked a senior government minister to comment on reports that Madeleine is being held by perverts in Morocco, he warned that we could be in serious trouble simply for investigating this scandalous proposition.

Broadcast: Madeleine's parents have made numerous media appearances - the most recent last week on Spanish TV

The international child protection organisation Don't Touch Our Children dismissed a report that Madeleine might be being forced to work as a petit bonne, or ‘little maid’ - the old French colonial term for the hundreds of children held against their parents’ will and put to work as house slaves by wealthy Moroccan families.

“It's nonsense”, said director Amal Merimi. "We don't have any cases of abuse [of children] that age. Normally the maids are 12 or 13 years old”.
 
So if Madeleine really was in the taxi a month ago, what became of her after being taken to Al Hoceima?

Naoual and Antonio Jimenez drove to Fez, 300 miles south-west of Al Hoceima, to request assistance from a local police chief, a family friend.

Staggeringly, the high-ranking officer knew nothing about Madeleine, and so gazed blankly at her photograph. However, when they explained that she was missing, he agreed to help - though not officially. And for a fee, naturally.

The officer enlisted lower ranking policemen in outlying stations, who, in turn, sent a small army of young boys to show the picture to people in the dozens of small towns and villages surrounding Fez, in the starkly beautiful Rif Mountains. Anyone who recognised Madeleine was asked to call Naoual's mobile.

“We got hundreds of calls that week”, she recalled. “About 200 of them said they had spotted a girl with a woman aged around 40 wearing a chilaba headscarf. Sometimes they also said there had been a teenage girl aged between 14 and 16 with them.

“They thought she, too, was a Berber and looked like the woman's daughter.
 
“The sightings were all over the north of Morocco, mostly in the area of the Rif Mountains. Some agreed to see us, but others just gave the information and hung up. There was one person - a lawyer - who started asking for money straight away. He said he could help us but wanted 3,000 euros. We said no.

“Then there was a storeholder on the contraband market in Fnideq. He said he had seen the girl with the woman when she came to buy cheese and milk from his stall. He said he gave the girl a lollipop and noticed her distinctive right eye”.
 
Another elderly couple placed ‘Madeleine’ in Meknes, a northern city. They had been at a funfair with their grandchildren, and claimed to have seen the little girl crying as she dismounted from a train ride.

They offered her a sweet, but she replied ‘No’ in English. Then the woman she was with ran over, grabbed her hand and pulled her away.

Were all these callers simply spinning stories in the hope of a reward? Had they merely seen another Madeleine lookalike? Or had they really spotted her?

Madeleine McCann: Missing since May 3

For the detectives, working in a country three times the size of Britain, with poor communications, even checking out one of these leads was a painfully slow process, and eventually Naoual returned to Spain.

Still believing Madeleine is being held in Morocco, however, the Metodo team have remained behind, and a few days ago, Jiminez called Naoual again. He asked her to ’phone someone who had contacted him but spoke only Arabic, a language he does not understand.

This caller turned out to be rather different from the rest: an articulate schools inspector from a sprawling but remote mountain village of some 15,000 people, not far from Fez.

He said he was sitting with about 15 neighbours, and they all had the same story to tell. They had studied the circulating photograph of Madeleine carefully, and felt sure that this was the strange new girl they had seen in the village recently. She lived on the outskirts of the community with a Berber woman, aged around 40, and a teenage girl, aged around 15.

Listening to the man, Naoual's pulse quickened. Everything seemed to tally. Naoual says she passed the new information to Jimenez, but she is not sure whether he found time to go to the village because, a couple of days later, he was back in Spain. She also informed the police in Fez, who have done nothing.

So I followed the trail through the mountains to the village. Its people are mainly poor farmers and small traders. The village is too poor to have its own police station, which would obviously have advantages for anyone hiding an abducted child.

But when I spoke to the schools inspector who had alerted Naoual, he remained convinced that the little girl in the photo and the child who lives near the village are one and the same. Currently visiting relatives 400 miles away, he is returning home soon and is confident he can prove what he says.

Naoual, for her part, believes Madeleine is languishing somewhere in the country of her birth.

“I know some people will think it sounds fantastic when you start talking about little European blonde girls being kidnapped, taken to Morocco and sold”, she says. “But I am Moroccan and I think it is totally feasible. It's a very secretive country and there are a lot of girls who are stolen and held in cellars, to be sold for sex.

“I don't want a penny for my story. All I want is for Madeleine to be found safe and well, and reunited with her parents. She is in Morocco. I'm sure of it”.
 
Tonight, near their Leicester home, Kate and Gerry McCann will be attending a special church service, timed as precisely as possible to mark the moment, six months ago, that Maddie went missing.

Meanwhile, my search in the mountains will continue. In my heart, I fear that it will prove fruitless.

Wouldn't it be wonderful, though, to find a little blonde English girl with a tell-tale flash in her eye?

ENDS

Link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491459/Six-months-Madeleine-Is-Moroccan-village-holds-key-disappearence.html#ixzz1QZLRqEZw

 

 

SELECTED OTHER REFERENCES

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-517858/Madeleine-Detective-linked-McCanns-private-investigators-25m-cocaine-probe.html#ixzz1QaQElt13

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491601/Madeleine-detectives-close-remote-farm-Morocco-sightings.html#ixzz1QaSJMfL0

http://gazetadigitalmadeleinecase.blogspot.com/2008/08/brian-kennedy-and-metodo-3-meet-pj.html

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/BRIAN-KENNEDY.htm

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sunday-mirror/2007/11/04/maddy-case-closed-by-xmas-98487-20058899/

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23422896-madeleine-pictured-in-handcuffs-the-mccann-detective-once-held-over-phone-tapping.do

 

 

 

 

 

 

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