The parents of the girl who disappeared in 2007 accused the detective of invading their privacy when he wrote that they were involved in her disappearance
Her parents were not vindicated Madeline McCann for the court case against the former detective who implicates them in the daughter’s kidnapping them in a best selling book he had written.
Kate and Gerry McCann claimed their right to respect for their private and family life had been violated after former Portuguese detective Gonzalo Amaral claimed they had an affair with disappearance of the little girl in 2007.
The court case has been ongoing for years, but reached the European Court of Human Rights today, which ruled that there had been no violation.
The court said any damage to the parents’ reputations would arise from the fact that they were suspects in the case, not from Amaral’s book
This is the detective who was investigating her disappearance Madeleine but was removed from the case after criticizing British police.
With his book, in 2008, he accused her parents of hiding the little girl’s body.
The family were on holiday in Praia da Luz in Portugal’s Algarve region when Madeleine, who was three at the time, went missing from their hotel room.
Amaral was ordered to pay the McCanns €500,000 in defamation damages by a Lisbon court in 2015, but the ruling was overturned and subsequently withdrawn by Portugal’s Supreme Court in 2017.
In the latter judgment, the ECtHR said: “The court held that, even if it were assumed that the reputation of the applicants had been damaged, this was not because of the argument put forward by the author of the book, but rather as a result of the suspicions expressed that resulted in them being investigated during the criminal investigation (prosecutors decided not to take further action in July 2008) and had led to intense media attention and much controversy.
“Therefore, the information was disclosed in some detail to the public 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 breached their positive obligation to protect the applicants’ right to respect for their private life.”
Parents now have three months to appeal the decision.
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I am currently a news writer for News Bulletin247 where I mostly cover sports news. I have always been interested in writing and it is something I am very passionate about. In my spare time, I enjoy reading and spending time with my family and friends.
