McCanns to lodge complaint against Portuguese detective

MADELEINE McCann’s parents will lodge a complaint with Portuguese police alleging that former detective Goncalo Amaral broke his country’s strict judicial secrecy laws, the couple’s lawyer said.

Kate and Gerry McCann are already embroiled in legal action against Amaral in an attempt to ban his book which claims their daughter is dead.

Now the couple intend to accuse him formally of passing on information about the police investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance before the case was closed – a criminal offence in Portugal.

The McCanns’ Portuguese lawyer, Isabel Duarte, alleged that Amaral broke the law by sending a draft of his book to his publishers several months before the judicial secrecy period in the case was lifted in July 2008.

She said: “It seems that Goncalo Amaral passed information in the case files before the secrecy law was lifted.”

The lawyer also alleged the ex-policeman released facts about the investigation that were not in the case files.

It will be for the Portuguese public prosecutor to decide whether the former detective has a case to answer.

The McCanns, both 41, from Rothley, Leicestershire, flew to Portugal this week to hear Amaral attempt to overturn their ban on his book, Maddie: The Truth Of The Lie.

The ex-policeman called a series of witnesses to support his allegations that Madeleine died in her family’s Algarve holiday flat and that her parents faked her abduction.

The McCanns admitted sitting through the evidence at Lisbon’s main civil court was painful but insisted they were right to bring the case.

The couple could have to endure years of legal battles after Amaral vowed yesterday to fight all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if he loses.