POLICE FILES GIVE MACCANNS 'HOPE' !

The parents of missing Madeleine McCann have "drawn strength" from the lack of any evidence in police files that she is dead, said their spokesman.
Clarence Mitchell was speaking after the release of thousands of Portuguese police documents on the case.
He told the BBC: "They hope against hope she is being held somewhere".
Kate and Gerry McCann have accused police of exaggerating DNA evidence to name them as suspects after Madeleine vanished, aged three, in May 2007.
The police inquiry into the girl's disappearance was wound up last month due to a lack of evidence.
The McCanns and a third British national, Robert Murat - who have always strongly denied having had any involvement in what happened to Madeleine - were then declared to no longer be formal suspects.
This is not, unfortunately, a detective novel, a crime scenario fit for the investigative efforts of a Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot - Portuguese public prosecutors.

Sifting through case files
The questions put to Kate McCann

The Portuguese police files, made public on Monday, include details of the lines of inquiry pursued, forensic reports, pictures of the bedroom where Madeleine was sleeping, witness statements and transcripts of interviews with the McCanns.
Among the files was a prosecutor's report that said the investigation had uncovered "very little" conclusive about Madeleine's fate.
In their final 58-page report, dated 21 July, public prosecutors Jose de Magalhaes e Menezes and Joao Melchior Gomes noted that detectives were unable to achieve any proof.
They added: "This includes the most dramatic thing, ascertaining whether she is still alive or dead - which seems the most probable."
They went on to say investigators were aware their work was "not exempt from imperfections".
"This is not, unfortunately, a detective novel, a crime scenario fit for the investigative efforts of a Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, guided by the illusion that the forces of law and justice can always re-establish order," they said.

They said Kate and Gerry McCann could not have predicted that "in the resort they chose to spend their holidays they could place the life of any of their children in danger".
Other new information revealed in the files includes the account of one witness who reported seeing a man carrying a young girl with blonde hair on the night of the disappearance. He later told the police the man could have been Madeleine's father.
Martin Smith, 58, who was on holiday at the time, was interviewed by detectives in Portugal and his native Ireland but the line of inquiry was later discarded.
Four months after his initial statement Mr Smith contacted the police to say he had seen Madeleine's parents arriving back in Britain on BBC News, and the way Gerry McCann carried one of the couple's twins reminded him of the man he had seen in Portugal.

Madeleine went missing in May 2007, days before her fourth birthday.
When detectives replayed video footage of the couple's arrival at East Midlands airport, the witness said he was 60-80% sure that the man he passed was Gerry McCann.
But this was later dismissed by prosecutors because at the time of the sighting, shortly before 2200, Gerry McCann was sitting in the Ocean Club's tapas bar with other members of his party.
The papers also confirmed that police focus turned to the McCanns following a visit to Portugal by UK detectives last August.
Portuguese police cited DNA evidence as grounds for their suspicions.
Clarence Mitchell said police had told Mr McCann during interrogation that his missing daughter's DNA had been found in the boot of the car - hired 24 days after her disappearance.
But an e-mail from a UK forensic scientist had already warned that DNA samples taken from the couple's hire car was "inconclusive".
The investigation papers show a sniffer dog detected the apparent odour of a body in their hire car and apartment, and a second dog detected what was thought to be blood in the same locations.
British forensic scientist John Lowe, of the major incidents team of the Forensic Science Service (FSS), said the car sample contained 15 out of 19 components of Madeleine's DNA but they were not "unique to her".

Clarence Mitchell says the files will be investigated privately.
In an e-mail dated 3 September 2007 he said it was impossible to conclude whether the material taken from the car came from Madeleine.
The e-mail was translated into Portuguese the following day and four days later detectives named the McCanns arguidos, or formal suspects.
Mr Mitchell told the BBC: "You have to ask yourself what the police were trying to achieve by overstating evidence they simply didn't have in that way to Gerry."
Interview transcripts in the documents reveal that Kate McCann was asked directly if she had anything to do with the disappearance of her daughter.
She refused to answer this and nearly 50 other questions, as was her legal right, following advice from her lawyer.
"Her lawyers told her not to answer because there was a fear the questions could be leading," said Mr Mitchell.
Lawyers for the McCanns, both 40, from Rothley, Leicestershire, were given access to the police documents last week.
They are studying the papers for fresh leads that the couple's private detectives could follow up.

BBC NEWS REPORT.