Madeleine McCann’s parents lodge formal complaint against Supreme Court ruling

The parents of missing Madeleine McCann have said that they will fight a recent Portuguese supreme court decision to side with ex-detective Goncalo Amaral in the libel case Kate and Gerry McCann took against him.

Last month, Gerry and Kate McCann lost their Supreme Court appeal against Amaral, a former Portuguese police inspector, who claimed in his book The Truth of the Lie that the couple were responsible for their daughter's disappearance. Just over a week ago, Portugal's Supreme Court ruled that neither parent has formally been proved innocent for Maddie's disappearance, and can't be assumed to be so. The couple were ruled out as 'arguidos' (formal suspects) in 2008, but in their 76-page ruling Portuguese judges stressed that this does not equate to a ruling of innocence,

"It should not be said that the appellants were cleared via the ruling announcing the archiving of the criminal case. That ruling was not made in virtue of Portugal’s Public Prosecution Service having acquired the conviction that the appellants hadn’t committed a crime. The archiving of the case was determined by the fact that public prosecutors hadn't managed to obtain sufficient evidence of the practice of crimes by the appellants. It doesn't therefore seem acceptable that the ruling, based on the insufficiency of evidence, should be equated to proof of innocence."

Now, the Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha is reporting that Kate and Gerry McCann are planning to continue their fight,

"Maddie McCann's parents have called for the nullity of the judgment of the supreme court, because it was not possible for the public prosecutor to obtain sufficient evidence of crimes by the appellants."

Isabel Duarte, the McCann's Portuguese lawyer, has yet to comment or respond to any media requests after the supreme court's decision last week but confirmed that the couple have lodged a formal complaint against the ruling. Join the conversation on Twitter @HerFamilydotie