"Ye gods, the vultures gather."
Very true - we know full well from the Stephen Lawrence case and many many others, that investigations like this are in good hands and the likes of us shouldn't be meddling in their sterling work

Nobody is, as far as I can see, is screaming for blood - I detest that behaviour, but this case has been a series of blunders from day one
The parents, instead of being treated as parents of a lost child, have been regarded as chief suspects by police forces abroad and to a lesser degree, at home - the media went along with that and ran with the story until it stopped selling papers

Now a possible suspect and a mounting degree of circumstantial evidence has been found
So far, the only two postings I have made are on the treatment of the parents and the mounting circumstantial evidence

It is true that any suspect is entitled to justice - I can see nothing here that in any way breaches that right, but the notoriously heartless way the parents have been treated by the authorities puts a question mark over whether those involved so far are capable of delivering that fair trial, or even want to
If the present suspect turns out to be the killer, there will be a great deal of egg left on the faces of a fair number of law enforcers and news distributors
After over a decade of pressure ovr the Lawrence case, the British police force were finally forced to admit to gross incompetence, bias and eventually, institutional racism
The Bloody Sunday Massacre has taken three times that long to move from the ivory tower that the politicians placed it in - now those same politicians are fighting tooth and nail to see that justice will not be done, even though a verdict has been reached

The mob-howling populism that usually follows cases like the present one has no place in any decent society, but that doesn't mean that the the powers that be should not remain open to public scrutiny and be discussed rationally - as they have been here - not only permissible but, from what has transpired so far - essential - we are no loner in the tender hands of the Dixons of Dock Greens of the imagined past - politics looms over all international cases nowadays

There are parallels between this case and that of the murder of Sophie Toscan Du Plantier, which has now dragged on for over two dozen years and has finally arrived at the position where the parents of the murdered woman have forced re-investigation and the chief suspect is now fighting not to be tried in a French court
In cases like these, there are more than just the victim and the perpetrator involved
Jim