The terrible case of the abducted three year old Madeleine McCann can't help but touch everyone, whether they have children or not. However, one thing is clear to me, and that is that Portugal's rather odd version of civil rights seems to favour offenders over ordinary citizens and is clearly hampering this case.
In the UK we have followed the American "Code yellow" approach whereby as soon as a child is missing or a description of a possible abductor is known, local TV and Radio and newspapers are given immediate access to the information and are encouraged to report the story as much as possible. The UK police know that a trail can go cold very quickly. Despite knowing this widely known fact the Portugese have a strange law that prevents the police publicising details of the potential abductor for fear of jeopardising any trial.
In this case the law seems to state that the abductor should receive protection to go about his crimes because if he is identified, this affects his rights. Never midn the fact that by allowing him to remain anonymous it may be allowing him to commit worse crimes.
This is clearly a case of a very bad law that does nothing for victims at all. Thank goodness I don't live in Portugal. It's certainly a country I would never visit with children.
4 comments:
Ignorance is always free.
The portuguese law, actually much better than the english, does NOT intend to protect any abductor rights, protects solely the investigation (where in the hell you found that?).
Or do you think that in England the police had better results? Remember the last two girls?
And do you know that the responsible for the only case of sexual abduction in 20 years has been a british?
I bet the portuguese are grateful you don't live there...
They like childreen, would never leave them alone at night to go out dinner and they respect each other and their police.
Is this comment gonna be approved, or are you going to protect your civil rights to a nasty and stupid post?
Or are you going to be a coward and hide behind your anonymity ?
The idiot from Portugal seems to want to equate this to the Holly and Jessica murders. Subtle difference(he is too think to know).
- Holly and Jessica were murdered before they were even reported as missing.
- Police had found their killer in seven days whereas the Portugese have not done anything for seven days.
I think you're making things up or getting over emotional.
They are not allowed to disclose details of the case to protect the right to a fair trial. This is probably important in Portugal considering its not long since it was a dictatorship - the sort of regime that tends not to give fair trials.
Do they know who the abductor is? It doesn't seem so. Do they even have a description? Again, it doesn't seem so.
So why should they be starting a witch hunt? To make the victims feel better? Not a good way to ensure justice.
I do think that the law is probably too inflexible, but you are going too far with this statement.
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