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Any damage to Kate and Gerry McCann's reputation would have arisen from the fact that they had been suspects in their daughter's disappearance, not from the detective's book, the European Court of Human Rights ruled.

Madeleine McCann's parents have lost a court case over claims in a bestselling book by a former detective that implicated them in their daughter's disappearance.

Lawyers for Kate and Gerry McCann argued that the Portuguese authorities had breached their right to respect for a private and family life in the way the courts there dealt with their libel claims against Goncalo Amaral.

The case has rumbled on for years, but came to a head on Tuesday at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ruled there had been no violation.

The McCanns said that they were "naturally disappointed" with the ruling, but said they had taken action over Mr Amaral's claims because they feared they would hamper the search for Madeleine.

Mr Amaral was the lead detective investigating the disappearance, but was removed from the case after criticising British police.


His 2008 book implicated the McCanns in their daughter's abduction and accused them of hiding her body.

The family were on holiday in Praia da Luz in the Algarve region of Portugal when Madeleine, who was three at the time, went missing from their holiday apartment.

The ECHR said that even if the McCanns' reputation had been damaged, this was "not on account of the argument put forward by the book's author".

Instead, this was "a result of the suspicions expressed against them, which had led to their being placed under investigation" and had led to intense media attention and controversy.

The court added: "The information had thus been brought to the public's attention in some detail even before the investigation file was made available to the media and the book in question was published.

"It followed that the national authorities had not failed in their positive obligation to protect the applicants' right to respect for their private life."

The McCanns now have three months to appeal against the decision.

Mr Amaral was ordered to pay the McCanns €500,000 in libel damages by a Lisbon court in 2015, but the decision was overturned and then thrown out by the Portuguese Supreme Court in 2017.

https://news.sky.com/story/madeleine...maral-12701770