Witness Statement

Armando Augusto Morais

Occupation: GNR Officer

Date: 2007/05/16. Time: 14.15.

He has been a GNR officer since 1982. He currently works in the Portimao Territorial Group, working within the forensics [cynotechnic] service.

On 4th May he was called at about 01.15, he arrived at the OC at about 1.55, accompanied by the officer Laçao.

They presented themselves to Sergeant Duarte from the GNR Lagos post and were informed by him of the disappearance of a small girl from the resort. There were other GNR officers present at the scene, but he does not remember their names. There were also PJ officers present.

After having established exactly where the girl had disappeared from, he was given a piece of her clothing by one of his colleagues, whose name he does not remember.

From the door of the apartment, accompanied by his dog,

he walked the entire perimeter around the above mentioned blocks of apartments and also checked the exterior of various houses on that area.

As he did not obtain any results in the area close to the resort, he extended the perimeter of the search to a distance of 1 km.

He does not remember having seen plain clothed officers at the scene.

He remembers having seen the McCann couple once, near to the door of the apartment. He did not have any dialogue with them as he does not speak English.

He says that he did not have any dialogue with anyone, limiting himself to exercising his functions, accompanied by his dog, with whom he searched.

He says that he never entered the apartment which Madeleine disappeared from, he was only in the access corridor to the apartment.

When asked, he said that he only saw Robert Murat on the second day of the searches, during the morning of 05-05-2007, near to a GNR vehicle, parked at the site.

He never spoke to Murat. He does not remember having seen Murat in the early morning of 4th May.

No more is said. Reads, ratifies, signs.