Daily Express Headline; says: 'THE case against Madeleine McCann’s parents was on the verge of collapse last night after Portuguese police were refused permission to re-interview them. The investigating judge, who is examining 4,000 pages of evidence, has ruled that any further interrogation should take place in the UK. The dramatic move, which means Kate and Gerry will not be forced to return to Portugal immediately, has led to speculation that the case against them is about to be thrown out.But the slurs go on, with reports that police are looking at Kate’s medical records. They believe she took sedatives as a result of depression while she struggled to control Madeleine. Yet in Britain an expert rejected suggestions fatal traces of the sedatives could have been discovered in Madeleine’s hair or in specks of her blood. Allan Jamieson, one of the UK’s top DNA specialists, said it was impossible to tell the concentration of a drug from a dried blood spot.
Speaking on the Tonight With Trevor McDonald programme, he also dismissed the suggestion that it would be possible to tell if a person had taken sedatives by examining a sample of their hair.
With the wheels coming off the investigation, police are coming under increasing pressure to refocus their energies on hunting for Madeleine. Last night there was rising concern that a series of reported planned searches had come to nothing. Policia Judiciaria officials, who earlier this month declared the McCanns official suspects, or arguidos, had wanted to subject the couple to a further round of gruelling questioning, in the hope of breaking one of them. However, following intervention from the judge, they will now have to hand over control of questioning to their counterparts in the UK.
The seven friends who were with the McCanns on the night Madeleine disappeared are also expected to be called to police stations in the UK to undergo fresh questioning.
Portuguese legal experts believe that the refusal to order the McCanns back to Portugal indicates a growing feeling among the judiciary that the evidence is not strong enough to bring charges. Prosecutors – who believe that Kate accidentally killed Madeleine and then disposed of her body with the help of her husband – lodged an application just days after the McCanns quit Portugal to have the couple brought back. But Judge Pedro Daniel Dos Anjos Frias rejected the request, ordering any further questioning to take place in the UK. Portuguese detectives will now have to submit a formal application to officers in Leicestershire where the McCanns live, setting out what questions they want putting to the couple.
Among those will be the 40 questions which were put to Kate during her 11-hour grilling earlier this month and which she refused to answer. It had been reported that the McCanns would be hauled in for further questioning this week but legal sources on the Algarve said then that fresh interrogations would only take place when the final results of all the forensic tests were known. That may not be for weeks, say sources at the Forensic Science Service lab in Birmingham.
Much of the case against the McCanns was built on evidence supplied by the lab. The McCanns said last night that they had received no request asking them to submit themselves for questioning in either Portugal or Britain.
