pages 53 and 54
Also, regarding the missing child’s parents, the PJ was careful to schedule periodic meetings with them and to designate an Official Liaison to the family as support for a permanent relationship, with the accompaniment and active collaboration of the Royal British Consulate in Portimão.
Shortly after the beginning of the investigation, continuous relationships were created with the Leicestershire Constabulary which sent, in support, various of their members to Portugal, having, equally, the PJ sending employees to the UK.
It is emphasized, specifically, that the level of cooperation and of understanding between the PJ and the Leicestershire Constabulary achieved, always, very high levels, united in the common pursuit of the missing child and the truth.
As such, the Portuguese authorities engaged an enormous and expensive panoply of technical and human resources, in the attempt to discover the missing child and the understanding of the explanation of the disappearance.
The PJ never disregarded any information or credible elements ��?as will be seen in this criminal process ��?that could have led to the realization of the disappearance, and there have been completed, during these months, more than 2000 diligences, formal and informal, in this regard.
As an example, we refer to the international cooperation, especially with Spain, the Netherlands and the UK which led to the detention and identification of individuals who tried to introduce deceptive information about the hypothetical destination or location of the child.
All of the information with any major or minor level of credibility was explored, nationally and internationally, by the PJ, with special relevance given to dozens of supposed sightings or localizations of the child, most of which, in fact, were widely publicized in the press.
The PJ, as in probably no other investigation in Portugal, withheld no effort, in the sense of providing exceptional technical means, manpower and financing towards the discovery of the child and the determination of the truth of the facts, having been completely accompanied in this effort by the Leicestershire Constabulary, the police department headquartered in the city of Leicestershire, from where most of the elements of the holiday group are from.
As another example, just the scientific exams alone cost many tens of thousands of euros.
Addressing now, and specifically, the question relative to the diligence known as the “reconstitution of the facts��?(Article 150º of the Penal Process Code), which was not performed due to the refusal of some of the integral members of the holiday group to return to our country (as documented in the Inquiry), the same would have clarified, duly and in the location of the disappearance, the following extremely important details, amongst others:
