Madeleine's parents consider new fund for legal battle

The parents of Madeleine McCann may set up a separate fighting fund to pay mounting legal costs as they seek to defend themselves against accusations they were involved in her death.

Kate and Gerry McCann have appointed top lawyers in Portugal and Britain after being named as formal suspects in their daughter’s disappearance.

They have said that they will not use the fund set up to find Madeleine, which now has more than £1 million in it, but a family source told Times Online today that setting up a new fund “was one of the options they may well look at”.

Mr and Mrs McCann are being advised by Michael Caplan, QC, and Angus McBride, from the London law firm Kingsley Napley. Mr Caplan acted for General Augusto Pinochet when Spain tried to extradite the former Chilean dictator from the UK in 1999.

The family source said: “I don’t know [what they are going to do]; that is one of the routes they can go down. Money is going to be a big problem I think. PR firms and law firms are not cheap and it is clear the fund will not be for legal advice but that is the least of their worries now."

On Friday a family friend, David Hughes, said that the fund was looking into whether it could by law pay for the couple’s defence but today he confirmed that Mr and Mrs McCann would not apply for money from the fund.

Outside the family home in the village of Rothley in Leicestershire, he said: “Gerry and Kate’s view is that if they take money from the fund, it might be that 90 per cent of people who made donations aren’t bothered about it. But if 10 per cent of people are bothered about it, they don’t want to upset them. They want to take the controversy out of the situation.”

Donations totalling £1,036,104.17 have so far been received for Madeleine’s Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned, according to the official campaign website. The fund, which for legal reasons is not a charity, has four objectives, one of which is “to provide support, including financial assistance, to Madeleine’s family”.

It could take a judge in Portugal several weeks to go through the ten lever-arch police files about the case. Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses, a public prosecutor based in Portimao in the Algarve, yesterday ordered the 4,000 pages to go before the criminal instructional judge.

The judge has a number of options, including ordering Mr and Mrs McCann to return to the Algarve to be placed under house arrest, or to attend more police questioning. He could also authorise further searches and approve further phone bugs. He has ten days before he must make a ruling on which options, if any, are appropriate.

The prosecutor has applied for the judge to validate retrospectively the seizure of diaries and correspondence belonging to the McCanns, a Portuguese newspaper reported today. Although the documents are already in the hands of the authorities, it is the judge’s duty to ensure that the investigation “respects the rights, freedoms and guarantees of the arguidos [official suspects], avoiding abusive interference in their private lives”, according to the Jornal de Noticias.

The paper did not specify whose diaries they were, but Mrs McCann has frequently been seen writing her diary since Madeleine went missing.

Police intend to seize some of Madeleine’s toys for analysis, another paper reported today. Among them will be her favourite stuffed animal, Cuddle Cat, which Mrs McCann has been seen clutching almost continuously since her daughter went missing, the Diario de Noticias said.

Mr Hughes could not confirm either of these claims, but said he believed that Cuddle Cat had already undergone forensic testing.

Detectives are convinced that Mrs McCann was in some way linked to the accidental death of her daughter, and that she and her husband then disposed of the body.

Hair and bodily fluids have been found in the boot of the car that the McCanns hired shortly before visiting the Pope at the Vatican. Police have said that the amount of hair in the Renault Scenic is too much simply to have been transferred on Madeleine’s clothing and other belongings when the couple moved to a villa in the resort.

One trace of bodily fluids has an 88 per cent match with the child, rather than the 100 per cent match that was previously reported, detectives said in an off-the-record briefing on Monday night. They denied that blood traces had been found.

The McCanns, both 39-year-old doctors, vehemently deny any involvement in the death. They fear that they are being framed by police and that evidence is being planted.

Portuguese newspapers have suggested Mrs McCann could face charges of homicide by negligence and concealing Madeleine’s corpse.

If the prosecutor makes a request - for example, to bring charges or impose stricter bail conditions on the McCanns - the judge has ten days to decide whether to agree to it.

Mr McCann’s sister, Philomena McCann, said the handing of the files to the judge changed nothing as far as her family was concerned. She added: “If they bring charges against Kate and Gerry, that will give them a chance to clear their name. It will give us a chance to end all this speculation.”

Mr McCann used his blog on the official Find Madeleine website to assert yesterday that he was “100 per cent confident” his wife was innocent and to speak of the “unending nightmare” of the past week.

He wrote: “We always hoped that we would not have to return without Madeleine and could never have imagined the possibility that we would do so as suspects in our own daughter’s disappearance. The pain and turmoil we have experienced in this last week is totally beyond description. Kate and I are totally 100 per cent confident in each other’s innocence, and our family and friends have rallied round unflinchingly to support us.”

Police are planning fresh searches in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz, where Madeleine went missing 132 days ago, including digging around the village church of Nossa Senhora da Luz, according to the Diario de Noticias newspaper.

Chief Inspector Olegario de Sousa refused to confirm or deny the report, and there was no sign of searches at the church today.

Fernando Jose Pinto Monterio, Portugal's attorney general, announced last night that he was appointing a second public prosecutor to the case, the Lusa news agency reported. Luis Bilro Verao will work with Mr Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses.