Dear Mrs Hudson
I write as promised further to my e-mail sent just after 5pm yesterday.
I have now had a little time to review the contents of your letter and digest the 15 accompanying pages which list the articles, letters, forum postings and other material that your clients wish to be removed from public view.
In practical terms, the following has been agreed.
So far as The Madeleine Foundation is concerned, the Committee has decided forthwith to remove all of the 22 articles, letters, statements and newsletters etc. that your clients have objected to in part or whole.
So far as the forum 'Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann' is concerned, the forum-owner and her administration team have been notified of the 42 posts of mine (together with certain links) that your clients want removed. I must make it clear that whilst I have what is called 'Moderator status' on that blog and can intervene on the forum just as other Moderators can, I am not part of the administration team and therefore do not have a controlling say over the contents of that form. The forum owner has informed me that she is in the process of removing the posts to which your clients object and is I understand to go even further by removing all the threads where those posts appear.
In practical terms, therefore, the actions your clients requested being taken in your letter dated 12 August either have been or are being taken.
Turning now to the contents of your letter and addressing the question of whether a court is likely to find me in contempt of my undertaking, the following points are relevant.
1. In her book 'madeleine', Dr Kate McCann wrote that I had 'undertaken not to repeat allegations' but that I was 'going around insinuating that we were involved in Madeleine's disappearance'. I have mostly written about the case since November 2009 either on The Madeleine Foundation website or on Jill Havern's forum. I have made over 3,500 posts on that forum but I note that you only regard 42 of them as being in contempt of my undertaking.
2. As I have explained to you in correspondence, my undertaking was never an undertaking not to discuss the case; it was not a vow of silence. You are also aware from our correspondence that I regard some of the very obvious and flat contradictions between the accounts of your clients and their friends as material which deserves to be discussed. To take just one specific example, the clearly contradictory accounts of the occasion that Dr David Payne is said to have visited your clients' apartment at around 6.30pm on 3 May 2007. I find it hard to believe that a High Court Judge would find it 'contempt' to continue to raise questions about that contradiction. Dr Kate McCann's account of this encounter on page 67 of her book does not reconcile the many contradictions Dr McCann and Dr Payne at the time.
3. On examining the material on Jill Havern's forum that you seek to remove, the very first item asks me to remove the post made at 6.00pm on 11 February 2009 on the thread: 'Goncalo Amaral - A Biography'. On examining that post, it is simply a list of the 48 Questions asked by the Portuguese Police on 8 September which your client refused to answer. I note that elsewhere (point 52 in your 14-page schedule of alleged contempts of court), you claim that to circulate the 10-minute video on YouTube of my reading out those 48 questions is actionable contempt worthy of being punished by a High Court Judge. Should this matter proceed to a contempt hearing, I feel sure that a Judge would NOT regard this as contempt of court since that list of questions has been made public by the Portuguese Police. Not only that, it is currently viewable on the BBC's website and that of other national media e.g. the Daily Mail. It is available at hundreds of other places on the internet. Out of consideration for your clients' demands, the YouTube link which you give at Item 52 on page 14 has now been disabled so that it can no longer be viewed. However, unless you are able to specify in precise terms how publication of that list of unanswered questions constitutes libel of your client, and therefore becomes contempt of court in my case, I cannot see why either the 11 February 2010 post you referred to nor the YouTube video should not be restored to public view.
4. Twice in your letter you refer to 'flagrant breaches' of my undertaking. This is not quite how your client puts it. She says in page 312 of her book: "He is still going around insinuating that we were involved in Madeleine's disappearance, only now he is just being slightly more careful about how he says it".
5. The publications your clients required in pages 4 and 5 of your letter to be removed from public view either have been removed or are in the process of being removed.
6. You refer in your letter to letters sent to me by yourselves on 5 February, 15 July and 3 August 2010, the last one of these being over a year ago. These letters were answered in full at the time and obviously should your clients proceed with their application to have me held in contempt then those responses will be produced.
7. I undertook to refrain from suggesting that your clients should be 'suspected of causing the death of Madeleine'. You say again as you and your clients have said many times that there is 'no credible evidence' that Madeleine died in your clients' apartment on that holiday. On that matter, as you know, I honestly and frankly beg to differ. Should this matter proceed to a contempt hearing, the Judge will need to have before him/her a whole range of evidence which does point in that direction. To give examples: Goncalo Amaral's book: 'The Truth About A Lie', the report of Tavares de Almeida dated 10 September 2007 which is in our book: 'The Madeleine McCann Case Files: Volume 1, the opinions of Lee Rainbow and Mark Harrison, the report of Martin Grime; a range of books published in Germany and the U.S. about the evidence, and not least the inferences that may reasonably drawn from a long list of contradictions and changes of story etc. which were conveniently summarised in the Madeleine McCann Research Group's '50 FACTS' leaflet.
8. In relation to the passages from the letter we sent to David Cameron on 18 May 2011 and from which you quote extensively on page 3 of your letter, you make the comment in paragraph 7 on page 4 that "...in a large number of instances - including the letter to David Cameron from which we quote above - you do not even put your allegations in question form but instead state as a fact that you believe that Madeleine died in the holiday apartment and that her parents conspired to cover up the death". This is simply not true. Kindly look again very carefully at the actual words I have used in the letter to David Cameron:
"A great many people consider that there is more than adequate evidence that Madeleine McCann died in the McCanns' holiday apartment..."
"This is the settled view of the former senior investigator in the case, Goncalo Amaral..."
"Dr Amaral advances the view that [Madeleine] may have died as a result of an accident..."
"Another view of what might have caused Madeleine's death is the possibility that she was over-ssedated by the McCanns"
"...clearly the alerts of two of the world's top sniffer dogs...are significant..."
"...a very large amount of circumstantial evidence suggests that the McCanns and their friends have not told the truth...
"[Various people] subscribe to the view that the balance of evidence points in the direction of Madeleine having died in the McCanns' holiday apartment...if that hypothesis is correct..."
Nowhere in those three paragraphs do I, as you claim "state as a fact that you beleive that Madeleine died in the holiday apartment and that her parents conspired to cover up the death".
Should contempt proceedings be brought I am minded to defend them and will in addition make an application to vary the terms of the undertaking".
Yours sincerely
Tony Bennett
