20 October 2010
Guardian Unlimited
Giles Tremlett
Appeal court lifts block on sales of book by former detective alleging Madeleine is dead and abduction story was fabricated
Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of missing Madeleine, suffered a setback today in their legal battle with a Portuguese police officer when a Lisbon appeal court overturned a ban on his book about the case.
The book by former police detective Gonçalo Amaral, who led the Madeleine investigation in the first five months after the three-year-old's disappearance, can now go back on sale.
In September last year the McCanns obtained the ban on Amaral's book Maddie – The Truth about the Lie, in which he claims they were involved in the toddler's disappearance.
Amaral claims Madeleine died accidentally in the Algarve holiday apartment at Praia da Luz, where she was first reported missing in October 2007, and that her parents fabricated the abduction story. The McCanns, who have never ceased in their search for the missing girl, are suing him for defamation.
Portugal's attorney general, having reviewed the investigation, has ruled there is no evidence to suggest that the McCanns are anything other than entirely innocent. (Note: Untrue. They have never been declared innocent. The case is "shelved", not solved and the McCanns were NEVER cleared by the Portuguese authorities.)
The court said the decision to block sales of the book had broken "a constitutional and universal right: that of opinion and freedom of expression."
"The contents of the book do not breach the basic rights of the plaintiffs," the court said, according to the Jornal de Noticías newspaper's website.
"The book is an exercise in freedom of speech," Amaral told Portugal's Lusa news agency. "Portuguese democracy has won, as banning the book was unconstitutional."
A spokesman for the McCann family said the decision did not stop the defamation case. "The defamation action against Mr Amaral is very much continuing," he said. "Kate and Gerry's lawyers are now examining the detail of this latest ruling and are considering an appeal."
After Amaral lost an earlier appeal, the McCanns claimed his book had caused "significant, ongoing damage to the search for our beloved daughter Madeleine and to the rights of our family ... there is no evidence that Madeleine has come to any harm."
They added: "As painful and personally damaging as the slanderous claims of Mr Amaral and his supporters have been to us and our family, our primary focus has always been, and always will be, to find Madeleine through our own best investigative efforts."
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