MADELEINE DETECTIVES HAVE LITTLE TO SHOW!

By Ben Ando - BBC News.

For police investigating Madeleine McCann's disappearance on 3 May this year, the six-month anniversary will simply draw attention, yet again, to just how little they have managed to ascertain.

There remain three official suspects: Gerry and Kate McCann, Madeleine's parents, and Robert Murat, an expatriate British resident of Praia da Luz.
But beyond the mantra of "ongoing forensic tests" there appear to be no firm lines of enquiry and no apparent prospect of any charges.
The sightings there have been, in Morocco and elsewhere, are being generated increasingly by investigators hired by the McCann appeal fund, and not the police in Praia da Luz or Portimao.
In Britain, the Forensic Science Service is continuing to carry out unspecified testing on samples sent to their laboratories in Birmingham; and various British police forces have given either ongoing or ad hoc assistance when asked.
Such activities, co-ordinated by Leicestershire police, have included translators, family liaison officers, child abduction experts and specialist sniffer dogs, but there have been little or no new initiatives in the last few weeks.
Serving British police chiefs are reluctant to criticise the Portuguese police openly.
This is for a variety of reasons: professional courtesy, to avoid undermining the inquiry and to avoid jeopardising future combined operations.
But privately, many experienced detectives feel that the investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance has been a fiasco.

One man who can speak out is Roy Ramm. A former commander of the Metropolitan Police's specialist operations unit, Mr Ramm was a detective for a quarter of a century.
He was often called upon to review stalled investigations both in the UK and abroad, and he believes this investigation was fatally flawed - virtually from the start.
"Every detective here knows that forensic evidence is pivotal in enquiries like this. It can give you huge amounts of information about who might have been there - and it can also prove a negative.
"But the Portuguese did not preserve the crime scene. They allowed lots of people to traipse through that apartment. If that had happened in this country, I feel that the officer in charge would have faced disciplinary action."
Mr Ramm also feels the enquiry lacked a cohesive strategy.

In the UK, he explained, detectives work from the inside out; starting with any victim's immediate family and working their way out.
He feels that the questioning of the McCanns many weeks after Madeleine vanished showed the police "jumping" from theory to theory; he describes the response as "typical" of a small, provincial force becoming overwhelmed by events.
"What we did not see," he told me, "was the launch of a major enquiry, involving experienced personnel, the sealing off of the crime scene, and the rapid deployment of both search officers and those to take witness statements and other enquiries.
"What we call the 'golden hour' - that period immediately after an incident takes place when clues and people's memories are still fresh - was totally lost."
And, although they are not the fault of the police, Mr Ramm says it's clear that Portugal's seemingly arcane privacy laws also contributed to the confusion and lack of direction that characterised this enquiry.
"The police in Portugal were overwhelmed by the story and began fighting the media, instead of using them to raise awareness and generate leads.
"It's only in the last few days that we've seen the image of the person carrying the child; this sort of thing would have been much more powerful immediately after Maddie disappeared."
Mr Ramm, like many officers, now believes the trail has all but gone cold for the police in Portugal.
He believes a serious review of the case - carried out possibly by a senior police investigator from another region; possibly even another country - may put elements of the inquiry back on track.
He welcomed the change of command in Portugal but thinks it's probably "too little, too late."
Six months since Madeleine McCann vanished, it seems that the chances of the police finding out where she is, and who was responsible, are fading by the day.

BBC NEWS REPORT.