The McCanns have denied harming the police investigation into their missing daughter Madeleine. A family spokesman said the media operation since the young girl disappeared from the family's holiday apartment in Portugal had been "carefully considered".Clarence Mitchell was responding to accusations from one of Portugal's top police officers that Gerry and Kate McCann had created a press frenzy they could not control.
Carlos Anjos, chairman of the Portuguese Union of Police Detectives, said the couple had acted against police advice and were "partly to blame" for stories they complained about.
"There is no criminal investigation which can feed a news frenzy for six months so what we have seen are both English and Portuguese journalists behaving in a scandalous and unprofessional way. Writing terrible stories in the papers some of which have clearly affected the McCanns... now we have to say that the McCanns are partly to blame for this. Because it was something they created. It is our opinion that the McCanns created a monster of information about the 'Maddie case' which they then lost control of." (Sky News)
