Daily Express Headline 'McCann's Guilty Of Extreme Negligence; says: 'Kate and Gerry McCann were blamed for daughter Madeleine’s disappearance by the mayor of Praia da Luz yesterday.
He accused them of “extreme negligence” in leaving Madeleine and two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie alone in a holiday flat as they dined out with friends. Manuel Domingues Borba said the couple should have been forced to stay and face justice in Portugal. And he said the case had left a stain on a peaceful community with no history of major crime.
“I would never leave my children sleeping alone and go to dinner in a foreign country – especially as there are babysitters for that very purpose,” he said. “I consider the parents guilty of negligence at the very least. There was a total abuse of trust and extreme negligence. The parents are still arguidos. They are guilty of abandonment – at the very least.”
Mr Borba, who helped to organise official searches for Madeleine after she went missing on May 3, was speaking publicly about the case for the first time.
But last night the McCanns’ spokesman Clarence Mitchell dismissed Mr Borba’s comments as “nonsense”.
He said: “ At times they almost could not move for people coming up to them to wish them well. These comments we feel are unrepresentative of the majority of Portuguese people. We are not going to dignify this sort of nonsense with much comment. But I would like to know how he can prove these assertions. It is not true that they were involved. This man is not a police officer and has no access to any of the details of the case. Whenever Kate and Gerry were in Praia da Luz everybody around them was incredibly supportive and kind towards them.We are disappointed that this sort of comment is still being made, particularly when it is based on no proof whatsoever."
Daily Express Headline 'McCann's Guilty Of Extreme Negligence; says: 'Kate and Gerry McCann were blamed for daughter Madeleine’s disappearance by the mayor of Praia da Luz yesterday.