Madeleine McCann parents Kate and Gerry ‘warned by cops not to talk about missing daughter’ on 11th anniversary of disappearance - Sun
And so to Tracey and that little piece in the Sun.
Groundling: [angrily] The great Blacksmith who
accuses us of depending on newspaper stories and then quotes one!
Yes, yes, of course you’re right. Where were we?
Ah, Tracey. After gradually gnawing away at the perimeter guards
– Jane Tanner’s dark-skinned stranger abruptly banished from the face of the
earth, JT herself now strictly incommunicado, location unknown, the rest of the
Seven, now also unwilling to talk publicly about how Rong and Ridiculous Grange’s
dismissal of their timeline is – you might wonder if Grange is leaving the
parents a little isolated.
No, no, of course not. They are not suspects or persons of
interest and have not a tea-stain on their characters. Still, their informal spokespeople,
the famous Mr Friend and his chum Mr Pal, all otherwise known as Clarence Mitchell,
tell us that the parents have been
banned by the Yard from publicly discussing the case, or “specifically advised
not to” as Mr Pal describes it.
So, as Grange enters its final stages, every one of the
Tapas Nine has at last been silenced and the horrific farce of the media being used to
bypass or influence the normal legal route – Expunge
it! being the words of the then head of the McCanns’ criminal defence team for
the policy – has, it seems, come to an end after ten years.
We shall see whether Mitchell thinks he can get round it. It
will be tough because anything he says from now on about the case will mean
either a) he is inventing things without authority from the parents or b) the
parents are knowingly breaching the new requirements of the Yard. Since Mitchell
is a mentally exhausted shell who has contributed nothing but his contact list
to the team for at least three years he is unlikely to be up for the challenge.
But quite why Grange should be enforcing public silence on nine people who are accused of nothing and are not persons of interest is very strange. We're not even sure it's legal. So why have they all agreed to be bound? They ought to go to the court of Human Rights.
Roll on Grange.
