Slur accusation as details of Madeleine McCann case are leaked (with video)

Apr 11 2008 by Haydon Wood, Liverpool Daily Post

MADELEINE McCANN asked her mother just hours before her disappearance: “Why didn’t you come when we were crying last night?”, it was revealed last night.

The three-year-old’s stark question emerged amid leaked passages from police interviews given by Liverpool-born Kate and Gerry McCann, directly after their daughter’s disappearance in Praia da Luz, Portugal, last May.

The couple, who were in Brussels yesterday to launch a bid for a Europe-wide missing child alert system, were angered by the timing of the leak and were convinced it was a “blatant” attempt to smear them.

They called for the Portuguese Justice Ministry to launch an internal investigation into the revelations, which would be a serious breach of the country’s strict judicial secrecy laws.

One furious friend said: “The minute that you talk about Madeleine crying is the minute that the vultures will pile in, that’s why this has been leaked.”

Madeleine, who disappeared just days before her fourth birthday, went missing from the McCanns’ holiday apartment on the night of May 3 while the couple were eating tapas with friends nearby.

In her first interview with Portuguese detectives, Mrs McCann spoke about a conversa-tion she had with Madeleine just that morning. “While we were having breakfast, Madeleine said: ’Mum, why didn’t you come when we were crying last night?’”

Friends of the McCanns said last night that the couple had been “puzzled” by Madeleine’s remark at the time, as she had not apparently been crying when they called in for regular 20-minute checks from the restaurant across the pool where they dined each night during their holiday.

They said that one of the McCanns’ friends, Rachael Oldfield, had been in the adjoin-ing flat – on the other side of Madeleine’s wall – all evening and had not heard any crying.

The couple also insist Made-leine was not speaking angrily and they did not take it as a reproach.

Friends believe the comment could be a clue that an intruder was in the flat on the night of May 2 and briefly disturbed Madeleine and Sean before fleeing.

The Policia Judiciaria inter-views were leaked through journ-alist Nacho Abad, of Spanish television programme Ana Rosa Quintana.

The McCanns’ spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said: “Kate and Gerry have been utterly honest and utterly open with the police from the moment that Madeleine was taken.

“It is more than curious that this comment should now emerge on the very day that they are in Brussels trying to improve child-ren’s welfare and child safety.”