MrFood wrote:Not wanting to appear insensitive... buuuuuuuuut...

Does this seem like it's getting out of hand to anyone else here? Does the amount of media coverage and 'public outpouring' this story is generating seem completely disproportionate?

I'm well aware of the newsmedia 'silly season' where due to a dearth of political lead stories, they seize on 'human interest' stuff like this - but Blair is leaving / Brown is coming, the G8 summit, Iraq - it's not like there's nothing else to write about at the moment, surely?

<And now, I go out on a limb>

I'm gonna suggest that this wouldn't be generating quite so many column inches if her parents weren't quite so attractive and successful.

Tellingly, I can't find a link to a report about two black kids who went missing about two months ago. I vaguely remembered hearing something about it on the news, they'd been gone for a long while, but that is all I remembered. I haven't seen pictures of them, don't remember the fucking POPE getting involved on that one, haven't seen any posters of them in my local Tesco in rural Kent...

Anyone?

Cranius wrote:

The more I think about it the more it aggrieves me.

GypsumFantastic wrote:Both Madeleine and her 'twin' were born via IVF treatment.

gjhardwick wrote:

Cranius wrote:The more I think about it the more it aggrieves me.

in the respect that it could be ANYTHING in the backpack of that woman????

Simmo wrote:But so much has been made of the McCann's devout catholicism! They can't be that devout, or at least that orthodox, if they're having kids by IVF.

A tourist couple take a photograph a girl

‘Madeleine’s case’ Interpol investigates a photo taken by Spanish in Marruecos.

*A lawyer for the McCann couple showed he was very confident that the child is Madeleine.

*The photo was taken on the 31 of August by 2 tourist travelling from Chaouen to Tetuan.

*The Spanish couple who took the photograph noticed it had a ‘chilling resemblance”

Government sources in Albacete confirmed this information Published by a local paper and wrote that the couple had sent the girls photograph to the Police in Albacete. The image shows a blonde girl accompanied by a group of adults with magrebi (muslim) aspect has been send to Interpol.

According to Clara Torres the Spanish tourist who took the photograph, she did not seriously think that the photograph could have been of little ‘Maddie’ until Sunday when she heard by “some media” that there had been two separate sightings of Madeleine in Marruecos.

Torres explained that on August 31 she and her boyfriend were travelling by bus from Chaouen to Tetuan and she was passing the time inside the bus that was travelling 60 kilometres an hour by taking a series of photographs. In one of the Photos she noticed there was a blonde girl wrapped in a blanket or a towel being carried on the back of an Arabic looking woman.

Although at first instant they did not think it was probable that it would be Madeleine, and at the time forgot about the image they had taken that they didn’t even comment about it with Clara Torres’s parents who were travelling in a second bus with a group of tourists that were sightseeing Marruecos.

This Sunday when Clara heard that some tourists had seen Madeleine in Marruecos, they decided to download the photograph to their computer. After looking at it, they thought it has a chilling resemblance to Madeleine and they got in contact with the National Police in Albacete who took a copy of the image and told Clara that in “10 or 15 days” they would let her know if the analysis gave any results.

Clara Torres and her boyfriend thought this was a going to take a long time, and for this reason they spoke to a lawyer who went with them on Monday to the British Embassy where they send the photo to Scotland Yard and also spoke by phone to the McCann’s lawyer who seemed to be very confident that the child was Madeleine.

This novelty in the ‘Madeleine case’ was found out on the same day that the Portuguese Prosecutor, Joao Cunha de Magalhaes Menezes, has given a stern warning to the PJ to find the body of Missing Madeleine.

According to ‘The Daily Mail’ Cunha had recognised that that the case was ‘hanging on a thread’ and that the case they had against Kate and Gerry was not sufficient to convict them.

Madeleine disappeared from her bedroom on the 3rd of May whilst she slept with her two 2 year old twin siblings in an tourist apartment complex located in the Algarve whilst her parents dined in a nearby restaurant.

Cranius wrote:Their celebrity is at least in some part a result of their campaign, well intentioned or otherwise, and has managed to focus the whole country's attention on them. And now people feel suspicious and tricked.

Alberto the Frog wrote:It's still possible that the parents are entirely innocent, and if that turns out to be the case then they certainly didn't choose their path to celebrity - perhaps it's a little unfair to be searching their private lives for evidence of hypocrisy.

I'm sure we're all guilty of hypocrisy. At least I am.