This may be the end of the line for the long-running civil case taken out by the parents of Madeleine McCann to ‘silence’ their bête-noir, former PJ coordinator Gonçalo Amaral.
After all the hullaballoo and recriminations filling UK tabloids, Supreme court judge Dr Jorge Manuel Roque Nogueira has rejected the complaint lodged by Kate and Gerry McCann over what they considered a frivolous decision by fellow judges to uphold Gonçalo Amaral’s right to freedom of expression, sanctioning the intrinsic legality of his damning thesis ‘Maddie: the Truth of the Lie’.
Roque Nogueira’s decision, taken earlier today and published in PDF format online, means that Amaral has won the case for the third and possibly final time.
There is no higher court in Portugal to which the McCanns can take this fight - and the grounds for appeal to the European Court of Human Rights are “highly dubious”, said a source, particularly as Supreme Court judges referred to tenets set out by the ECHR in their 75-page deliberation.
For Amaral who has remained silent through this last tense stand-off over the Supreme Court ruling in January, the decision today means that finally his assets and property should be ‘unfrozen’, allowing him to return to the full control of his life.
As blogwriter Joana Morais has commented, Roque Nogueira’s decision came “sooner than we expected” and was “no doubt due to the weaknesses of the reasoning presented in the request for annulment of the Supreme Court’s ruling”.
For now, there has been no reaction from either the McCanns in UK, or their Portuguese legal team over here.
UK tabloids appear not yet to have the news.
By natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
Article by kind permission of Portugal Resident
Comments
On the McCann's side however money seemed to be the main motivation for the couple's behaviour. I red Amaral's book already 3 times and I still have the conviction he thinks (and says) right !
Presumably that line of enquiry will examine whether the McCanns killed their daughter wittingly or unwittingly as this seems never to have been examined by the UK police. In fact Amaral says they would not countenance the possibility despite evidence from the dog team of a cadaver in the apartment and hire car.