McCanns prepped for new court battle against detective who claimed they faked Maddie’s kidnap
MADELEINE McCann’s parents are to fight a Portuguese court decision to side with former detective Goncalo Amaral over his hurtful claims about their daughter’s disappearance.
Last month the country’s supreme court rejected their last-ditch appeal over his 2008 book The Truth of the Lie in which Amaral alleged Maddie died in Kate and Gerry’s holiday flat and that they faked her abduction to cover up the tragedy.
Judges backed a lower court’s decision taken in April 2016 to reverse the McCann’s 2015 libel win against the ex-policeman, leaving them facing a huge legal bill and the nightmare prospect of being sued by Amaral.
The ruling also challenged the couple’s insistence they had nothing to do with their daughter’s disappearance in a devastating put-down which is said to have sparked their fresh legal challenge.
Yesterday respected Portuguese daily Correio da Manha said Kate and Gerry were seeking to get the supreme court decision invalidated after launching a formal complaint against the judges’ findings.
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The report said: “The McCanns have requested the annulment of the supreme court decision, terming it frivolous for saying it ‘had not been possible for public prosecutors to obtain sufficient evidence of crimes by the appellants.’”
The newspaper said the McCanns had described the ruling as ‘leviano’ in the complaint lodged through their Portuguese lawyer - which in English translates as ‘frivolous’ but can also mean ‘sloppy’ or ‘rash’.
Last month’s ruling brought more anguish for Kate and Gerry, both 48, after judges also said the removal of their ‘arguido’ or formal suspect status should not “be equated to proof of innocence”.
Amaral was ordered to pay the McCanns £430,000 by a Lisbon court in April 2015 after they won round one of their lengthy judicial battle over his book and a subsequent TV documentary.
He got that ruling - and a ban on selling his book - overturned on appeal in April last year.
Earlier this month it emerged Amaral, removed as head of the investigation into Maddie’s 2007 disappearance after criticising British detectives, was writing a new book about the unsolved mystery.
It is understood he will be critical in the new book of some of the things Scotland Yard did in their review and later ongoing investigation of the case.
The former cop insisted from day one of his court fight with the McCanns that everything he wrote in his book was based on the publicly available case files.
After the Supreme Court ruling against them the McCanns said: “What we have been told by our lawyers is obviously extremely disappointing.
“It is eight years since we brought the action, and in that time the landscape has changed dramatically, namely there is now a joint Metropolitan Police and Policia Judiciaria investigation which is what we have always wanted.
“The police in both countries continue to work on the basis that there is no evidence Madeleine has come to physical harm.
“We will of course be discussing the implications of the Supreme Court ruling with our lawyers in due course.”
It is believed the McCanns are discussing the possibility of taking the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Isabel Duarte, the McCanns’ lawyer, said: “We received instructions from the clients not to make any declaration or give public information about the file against Mr Amaral or the case itself.”
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