Fourteen months after the disappearance of
British toddler Madeleine McCann, the Portuguese attorney general shelved the
case on Monday, clearing the girl's parents and fellow Briton Robert Murat of
involvement by lifting their status as official suspects.
No evidence had been found that Gerry and Kate McCann or Murat had
committed "any crime," the office of attorney general Fernando Jose
Pinto Monteiro said in a press release.
The three were therefore no longer subjected to any bail measures, the
communique said.
If new significant evidence emerged, however, the case could be reopened at the
initiative of the attorney general, or at the request of any authorized person.
In Britain, the parents of Madeleine, who disappeared in the southern
Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, expressed relief at being
cleared of any involvement in the case.
Her parents were dining with friends nearby when the girl went msising just
days before her fourth birthday.
"There is a degree of relief but no air of celebration whatsoever,"
said their spokesman, Clarence Mitchell.
"They are a wronged couple. They should never have been arguidos
(suspects)," he added.
Since being named suspects by Portuguese police last September, Kate and Gerry
McCann had to bear "this agony as well as the pain of losing their
daughter."
The McCann's have said they will hand over the case documents to a team of
private detectives in a renewed effort to find Madeleine.
"The main thing now is to get everything back to finding Madeleine. All of
this has damaged their good reputations and they will have to assess where they
go from here."
"The only thing they care about is finding Madeleine. We hope that the
Portuguese authorities will continue to cooperate with their private
investigation," the parents' spokesman said.
The McCann's said they hoped the search for Madeleine would now be given fresh
impetus by people coming forward with information.
But the Portuguese report stressed that there is a "strong belief by
British and Portuguese police that Madeleine is dead," London's Evening
Standard newspaper said Monday.
The lengthy and complex investigations in Portugal were marked by mutual
recriminations, with British media accusing the Portuguese police of
incompetence, and newspapers in Portugal suggesting that the McCann's were
responsible for the disappearance of Madeleine.
According to the Evening Standard, the attorney general's report contains a
"strong condemnation" of Portuguese police for "paying to much
attention to the media" while the massive search for Madeleine was going
on in the summer of 2007.
But the officer leading the investigations at the time, again insisted Monday
that Madeleine died inside the apartment.
"The evidence that we had gathered by the time that I left the case,
pointed to the girl being dead - and having died inside the apartment. I don't
know what happened next," Goncalo Amaral, who was sacked from the inquiry
last October, told the BBC Monday.
Meanwhile in Britain, a former detective criticised the Portuguese authorities'
decision to shelve the Madeleine case as "appalling" and
"unacceptable."
"I don't believe 14 months into an investigation you can put it on the
shelf. I think this is appalling," said child protection expert Mark
Williams-Thomas.
While he agreed that the arguido status on Madeleine's parents and Murat should
have been lifted, it was now questionable how much time the police would devote
to searching for Madeleine.
"They have got to keep looking for Madeleine because if
they aren't looking for her, who is?" said Williams-Thomas, dpa reported.