Jul 21, 2008, 19:01 GMT
Lisbon/London - The parents of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann vowed Monday that they would never give up the search for their daughter even though the Portuguese investigations into the case have been closed.
Speaking at their home in Britain, Kate and Gerry McCann said they were relieved that the Portuguese attorney general, who Monday announced that the case would be closed, had lifted their status as official suspects, or arguidos.
'It is hard to describe how utterly despairing it was to be named arguidos and subsequently portrayed in the media as suspects in our own daughter's abduction,' said Kate McCann.
'It has been equally devastating to witness the detrimental effect this status has had on the search for Madeleine.'
'We shall leave no stone unturned to find our little girl,' said Kate McCann, who was close to tears in a joint media appearance with her husband in the couple's home town of Rothley, in central England.
Their statement came only hours after the office of Portuguese attorney general Fernando Jose Pinto Monteiro announced that the Madeleine inquiry was being shelved for lack of evidence after 14 months of investigations.
The McCann's status as suspects, along with that of fellow-Briton Robert Murat, was being lifted, said the attorney's statement.
No evidence had been found that Gerry and Kate McCann or Murat had committed 'any crime,' the statement said, adding that the three were no longer subjected to any bail measures or other restrictions. 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.
Madeleine, then aged 3, disappeared from a holiday apartment in the southern Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, while her parents were eating at a nearby Tapas restaurant.
'There is a degree of relief but no air of celebration whatsoever,' said their spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, earlier.
'They are a wronged couple. They should never have been arguidos,' 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.
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