LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – The public prosecutor considering the Madeleine McCann case decided within hours of receiving details of the police investigation yesterday to pass it to a judge.
The 10-volume report on the Judicial Police’s investigation was delivered through the back door of the public prosecutor’s office in Portimao, near Praia da Luz, and it was thought that prosecutor Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses might spend several days examining it.
But by 5.15pm, it was disclosed that Mr Meneses had reached a quick decision that there is enough evidence to pass the file to a judge and this may mean the McCanns being asked to return to Portugal. The prosecutor may have passed the report – said to contain more than 1,000 pages – on to the judge in an attempt to secure powers that allow phone bugging, or to authorise more searches in the area.
The announcement was unexpected, coming on the day that the director of Portugal’s Judicial Police, Alipio Ribeiro, denied that a 99 per cent accurate DNA match for Madeleine had been found in a hire car used by her parents, as was reported on Monday night.
