The Sun story, 20 January 2011:
“Maddie ‘seen with suspect’ in Dubai”

A comment by The Madeleine Foundation

Please see our comments below the story, which we reproduce below from The Sun’s website:

QUOTE

COPS are probing claims missing Madeleine McCann has been seen - in Dubai. A girl looking like Maddie was spotted with a man ‘identical’ to an artist's impression of a suspect seen close to where she vanished in Portugal in May 2007.

An unnamed 35-year-old businessman told police he saw the girl with the man and two women outside a shopping mall in Dubai in November last year.

He said: "The guy looked very like the suspect because he had a scary face, a moustache, and was very skinny.

The woman with him was also very thin. Behind them I saw a little girl, about seven or eight years old, with a black woman in a veil.

"The girl looked so similar to the younger Madeleine. She had light brown hair. But it was her nose and eyes that made me think it was the missing girl."

Interpol and private investigators hired by Maddie's parents Kate and Gerry are probing the sighting. Maddie was three when she vanished on a family holiday in Praia da Luz.

UNQUOTE

As recently as 1 September last year, The Sun published a story which claimed that Madeleine had been abducted to order by a gypsy gang on behalf of a wealthy North African family who wanted a young white European girl. That story was based on a letter alleged to have been written on his deathbed, in a German flat, by known paedophile Raymond Hewlett, to a son, Wayne, who hated him and hadn’t had any dealings with him for 20 years. The letter was said to give details of a drunken gypsy who ‘revealed’ to Hewlett how his gang had ‘stolen Madeleine’. Wayne claimed that a ‘mystery man’ whom he couldn’t identify had travelled from Germany with this letter and given it to him. Some time afterwards, he said he burnt it, then decided to tell The Sun all about it. Even by The Sun’s notoriously lamentable editorial and journalistic standards, this article was a joke, and we took it apart line by line in an article on our website (see under ‘Articles’, www.madeleinefoundation.org.uk) or by direct link http://t.co/PiCG0JC

Now The Sun has abandoned the idea that Madeleine was abducted by a gypsy gang and has today run with the claim that she was walking alongside a black woman in a veil in Dubai.

The so-called facts in today’s Sun article are sparse. Let’s summarise them:

An unnamed 35-year-old businessman says he saw a ‘black’ woman in a veil, walking alongside a girl, perhaps aged about 7 or 8, who looked like Madeleine
In front of them was a ‘very skinny man’ who had a scary face and a moustache’, accompanied by another thin woman
This all happened ‘in November’.

The article claims that police officers from Interpol are currently ‘probing the sighting’. That seems highly unlikely. Would they still be ‘probing this sighting’ two months later?

The article also claims that the McCanns’ private investigators are ‘probing the sighting’. One wonders how. Are they in Dubai, searching? No details are given. Even if they were, what could they do? Would they have access to CCTV footage? Would they be allowed free access to go round interviewing whomsoever they wanted to in Dubai? Do they speak Arabic? Simply to ask these questions demonstrates that in no serious way can the McCanns’ investigators be ‘probing the sighting’.

In the unlikely case that this really was Madeleine McCann, how could this newspaper article possibly help? If anything, it would be likely to drive whoever was holding her underground, and cause him to withdraw Madeleine from public view. That was the same point we made in relation to the absurd Sun article of 1 September 2010. Once again, if that article had had any truth in it, the gypsy gang, and the wealthy family allegedly holding Madeleine, would become aware of the article, read it, and take steps to hide Madeleine.

We might also add that the ‘very skinny’ man referred to was said to look like ‘a suspect’. In fact, the sketch concerned, which was quickly dubbed ‘monster man’ or ‘George Harrison man’, was not of a suspect, but merely of a man that the McCann Team ‘wished to eliminate from their enquiries’. That was confirmed by both Clarence Mitchell and by Dr Kate McCann herself in a TV interview.

Furthermore, the Portuguese Police traced the person said to look like ‘monster man’ or ‘George Harrison man’ and eliminated him from their enquiries back in 2008. None of this, of course, was mentioned in the Sun article.

At this point we might briefly mention that, so far, the McCann Team have published
16 different artists’ impressions of people said to be either ‘suspects’, or ‘persons of interest’ or ‘people we wish to eliminate from our enquiries’. Of these, 14 are men, and two of them are women. The McCann Team have never let us know which ones we are supposed to be looking for, and which ones have been eliminated.

Last year, for example, the Daily Telegraph published a gallery of 11 of these various sketches. Neither then, nor since, have the McCanns and their advisers told us which ones we should be looking for. Are we expected to carry on looking for all of them?

Once again, therefore, this Sun story is mostly utter nonsense. As we have shown in relation to other Madeleine stories in various Rupert Murdoch media (The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch), stories about Madeleine McCann invariably emanate from the McCanns’ chief public relations adviser, Clarence Mitchell, who lives in Bath.

Mitchell’s closeness to the media in general, and to the Murdoch newspapers in particular, can be judged by a brief recital of the following facts:

Mitchell was formerly head of the Labour government’s 40-strong ‘Media Monitoring Unit’, based in the Cabinet Office. He openly boasted that his job there was ‘to control what comes out in the media’
After ceasing to work for the McCanns full-time (he now works for them part-time), he immediately landed a job at public relations firm Freud Communications, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law, Matthew Freud
In March last year, current Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Mitchell No. 2 to his Director of Communications, Andy Coulson, formerly Editor of the News of the World, yet another Murdoch title.

Mitchell, on behalf of the McCanns, aided by Brian Kennedy (the Cheshire-based double-glazing millionaire who runs the McCanns’ private investigation operation from one of his houses in Knutsford, Cheshire), and by Dave Edgar, the retired Detective Inspector appointed by Kennedy in early 2009 to head up the current investigation team, have conspired to ‘place’ all manner of contradictory stories on the media.

Examples include:

The claim by Dave Edgar that he was ‘convinced’ that Madeleine was being held in a ‘secret prison lair’ within 10 miles of Praia da Luz, where the McCanns and their friends holidayed
The McCanns’ claim that the following was a ‘strong lead’: A British banker, after ‘agonising’ for two years about whether to say anything, went to the McCanns’ investigation team saying that, after a night of drinking in downtown Barcelona, he met a Victoria Beckham-lookalike with an Australian accent who asked him if he had her new daughter. The banker, like the ‘businessman’ in today’s Sun story, was, of course, also anonymous. The McCann Team claimed she’d boarded a yacht bound for Australia and, later, Australian police became involved in searching for this woman. (Incidentally, it was at a press conference on this case that Dave Edgar claimed that the McCanns’ friend, Jane Tanner, who claimed to have seen a male abductor carrying away Madeleine the night she disappeared, said she might have been totally wrong and mistaken a man for a woman)
Claims that Madeleine was snatched by a gypsy gang
Claims that a couple had been seen in Portugal with Madeleine in the back of their car
Claims that Madeleine had been seen on CCTV in a supermarket in New Zealand.

The Sun has no doubt achieved sales of a few extra copies of their newspaper by running another unbelievable story about an alleged ‘sighting’ of Madeleine. Meanwhile these ‘sightings’ continue to cause problems. Examples include:

A member of the Croatian national football team and his wife whose 2-year-old son was mistaken for Madeleine on a Mediterranean beach - and nearly snatched away from them by a holidaymaker
A West Midlands man who was taken into police custody and interrogated because someone at a petrol station thought his daughter looked like Madeleine
The police in Canada were inundated with calls from the viewing public when a TV programme featured a school choir, in which one of the girl singers looked similar to an age-progressed picture of Madeleine.

These are just three amongst literally hundreds of false ‘sightings’ of Madeleine by members of the public who really believe they have seen her.

By now, there is evidence that the public is weary of all these ‘sightings’ and are increasingly beginning to wonder whether Madeleine was abducted at all.

Indeed, the McCann Team itself now doesn’t seem at all sure.

For three-and-a-half years and more, they have, throughout, insisted that the abduction of Madeleine was an unchallengeable fact.

However, in an interview on Radio Humberside on 6 January this year, Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ PR manager, who was plugging the McCanns’ forthcoming book on their daughter’s disappearance (which the McCanns have informed us will be ‘very truthful’), admitted that their claim that Madeleine was abducted was - and we quote:

‘Only an assumption’ - or a just a ‘working hypothesis’.

Article filed by Tony Bennett for The Madeleine Foundation, 20 January 2011

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The Sun story, 20 January 2011: “Maddie ‘seen with suspect’ in Dubai” A comment by The Madeleine Foundation Please see our comments below the story, which we reproduce below from The Sun’s website: QUOTE COPS are probing claims missing Madeleine McCann has been seen - in Dubai. A girl looking like Maddie was spotted with a man ‘identical’ to an artist's impression of a suspect seen close to where she vanished in Portugal in May 2007. An unnamed 35-year-old businessman told police he saw the girl with the man and two women outside a shopping mall in Dubai in November last year. He said: "The guy looked very like the suspect because he had a scary face, a moustache, and was very skinny. The woman with him was also very thin. Behind them I saw a little girl, about seven or eight years old, with a black woman in a veil. "The girl looked so similar to the younger Madeleine. She had light brown hair. But it was her nose and eyes that made me think it was the missing girl." Interpol and private investigators hired by Maddie's parents Kate and Gerry are probing the sighting. Maddie was three when she vanished on a family holiday in Praia da Luz. UNQUOTE As recently as 1 September last year, The Sun published a story which claimed that Madeleine had been abducted to order by a gypsy gang on behalf of a wealthy North African family who wanted a young white European girl. That story was based on a letter alleged to have been written on his deathbed, in a German flat, by known paedophile Raymond Hewlett, to a son, Wayne, who hated him and hadn’t had any dealings with him for 20 years. The letter was said to give details of a drunken gypsy who ‘revealed’ to Hewlett how his gang had ‘stolen Madeleine’. Wayne claimed that a ‘mystery man’ whom he couldn’t identify had travelled from Germany with this letter and given it to him. Some time afterwards, he said he burnt it, then decided to tell The Sun all about it. Even by The Sun’s notoriously lamentable editorial and journalistic standards, this article was a joke, and we took it apart line by line in an article on our website (see under ‘Articles’, www.madeleinefoundation.org.uk) or by direct link http://t.co/PiCG0JC Now The Sun has abandoned the idea that Madeleine was abducted by a gypsy gang and has today run with the claim that she was walking alongside a black woman in a veil in Dubai. The so-called facts in today’s Sun article are sparse. Let’s summarise them: An unnamed 35-year-old businessman says he saw a ‘black’ woman in a veil, walking alongside a girl, perhaps aged about 7 or 8, who looked like Madeleine In front of them was a ‘very skinny man’ who had a scary face and a moustache’, accompanied by another thin woman This all happened ‘in November’. The article claims that police officers from Interpol are currently ‘probing the sighting’. That seems highly unlikely. Would they still be ‘probing this sighting’ two months later? The article also claims that the McCanns’ private investigators are ‘probing the sighting’. One wonders how. Are they in Dubai, searching? No details are given. Even if they were, what could they do? Would they have access to CCTV footage? Would they be allowed free access to go round interviewing whomsoever they wanted to in Dubai? Do they speak Arabic? Simply to ask these questions demonstrates that in no serious way can the McCanns’ investigators be ‘probing the sighting’. In the unlikely case that this really was Madeleine McCann, how could this newspaper article possibly help? If anything, it would be likely to drive whoever was holding her underground, and cause him to withdraw Madeleine from public view. That was the same point we made in relation to the absurd Sun article of 1 September 2010. Once again, if that article had had any truth in it, the gypsy gang, and the wealthy family allegedly holding Madeleine, would become aware of the article, read it, and take steps to hide Madeleine. We might also add that the ‘very skinny’ man referred to was said to look like ‘a suspect’. In fact, the sketch concerned, which was quickly dubbed ‘monster man’ or ‘George Harrison man’, was not of a suspect, but merely of a man that the McCann Team ‘wished to eliminate from their enquiries’. That was confirmed by both Clarence Mitchell and by Dr Kate McCann herself in a TV interview. Furthermore, the Portuguese Police traced the person said to look like ‘monster man’ or ‘George Harrison man’ and eliminated him from their enquiries back in 2008. None of this, of course, was mentioned in the Sun article. At this point we might briefly mention that, so far, the McCann Team have published 16 different artists’ impressions of people said to be either ‘suspects’, or ‘persons of interest’ or ‘people we wish to eliminate from our enquiries’. Of these, 14 are men, and two of them are women. The McCann Team have never let us know which ones we are supposed to be looking for, and which ones have been eliminated. Last year, for example, the Daily Telegraph published a gallery of 11 of these various sketches. Neither then, nor since, have the McCanns and their advisers told us which ones we should be looking for. Are we expected to carry on looking for all of them? Once again, therefore, this Sun story is mostly utter nonsense. As we have shown in relation to other Madeleine stories in various Rupert Murdoch media (The Sun is owned by Rupert Murdoch), stories about Madeleine McCann invariably emanate from the McCanns’ chief public relations adviser, Clarence Mitchell, who lives in Bath. Mitchell’s closeness to the media in general, and to the Murdoch newspapers in particular, can be judged by a brief recital of the following facts: Mitchell was formerly head of the Labour government’s 40-strong ‘Media Monitoring Unit’, based in the Cabinet Office. He openly boasted that his job there was ‘to control what comes out in the media’ After ceasing to work for the McCanns full-time (he now works for them part-time), he immediately landed a job at public relations firm Freud Communications, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s son-in-law, Matthew Freud In March last year, current Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Mitchell No. 2 to his Director of Communications, Andy Coulson, formerly Editor of the News of the World, yet another Murdoch title. Mitchell, on behalf of the McCanns, aided by Brian Kennedy (the Cheshire-based double-glazing millionaire who runs the McCanns’ private investigation operation from one of his houses in Knutsford, Cheshire), and by Dave Edgar, the retired Detective Inspector appointed by Kennedy in early 2009 to head up the current investigation team, have conspired to ‘place’ all manner of contradictory stories on the media. Examples include: The claim by Dave Edgar that he was ‘convinced’ that Madeleine was being held in a ‘secret prison lair’ within 10 miles of Praia da Luz, where the McCanns and their friends holidayed The McCanns’ claim that the following was a ‘strong lead’: A British banker, after ‘agonising’ for two years about whether to say anything, went to the McCanns’ investigation team saying that, after a night of drinking in downtown Barcelona, he met a Victoria Beckham-lookalike with an Australian accent who asked him if he had her new daughter. The banker, like the ‘businessman’ in today’s Sun story, was, of course, also anonymous. The McCann Team claimed she’d boarded a yacht bound for Australia and, later, Australian police became involved in searching for this woman. (Incidentally, it was at a press conference on this case that Dave Edgar claimed that the McCanns’ friend, Jane Tanner, who claimed to have seen a male abductor carrying away Madeleine the night she disappeared, said she might have been totally wrong and mistaken a man for a woman) Claims that Madeleine was snatched by a gypsy gang Claims that a couple had been seen in Portugal with Madeleine in the back of their car Claims that Madeleine had been seen on CCTV in a supermarket in New Zealand. The Sun has no doubt achieved sales of a few extra copies of their newspaper by running another unbelievable story about an alleged ‘sighting’ of Madeleine. Meanwhile these ‘sightings’ continue to cause problems. Examples include: A member of the Croatian national football team and his wife whose 2-year-old son was mistaken for Madeleine on a Mediterranean beach - and nearly snatched away from them by a holidaymaker A West Midlands man who was taken into police custody and interrogated because someone at a petrol station thought his daughter looked like Madeleine The police in Canada were inundated with calls from the viewing public when a TV programme featured a school choir, in which one of the girl singers looked similar to an age-progressed picture of Madeleine. These are just three amongst literally hundreds of false ‘sightings’ of Madeleine by members of the public who really believe they have seen her. By now, there is evidence that the public is weary of all these ‘sightings’ and are increasingly beginning to wonder whether Madeleine was abducted at all. Indeed, the McCann Team itself now doesn’t seem at all sure. For three-and-a-half years and more, they have, throughout, insisted that the abduction of Madeleine was an unchallengeable fact. However, in an interview on Radio Humberside on 6 January this year, Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns’ PR manager, who was plugging the McCanns’ forthcoming book on their daughter’s disappearance (which the McCanns have informed us will be ‘very truthful’), admitted that their claim that Madeleine was abducted was - and we quote: *‘Only an assumption’ - or a just a ‘working hypothesis’.* Article filed by Tony Bennett for The Madeleine Foundation, 20 January 2011