Madeleine probe dossier opened

The police files from the exhaustive inquiry, which lasted more than 14 months, after the shelving of the case a fortnight ago.

The mammoth dossier - said to run to 20,000 pages - includes details of the lines of inquiry pursued by detectives, witness statements and transcripts of interviews with the little girl's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann.

The files were released under Portuguese law after the lifting of the period of judicial secrecy in the case.

Officials from the public prosecutor's office in the Algarve town of Portimao have copied the documents onto DVDs for reporters who have requested them.

Lawyers for the McCanns, from Rothley, Leicestershire, were formally given access to the files last week. They are studying the dossier for fresh leads that the couple's private detectives can follow up in their own search for their daughter.

The McCanns are keen not to give "a running commentary" on their legal team's trawl through the files, family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said. And they are reluctant to respond to questions raised by journalists allowed access to the documents.

Mr Mitchell said: "The Portuguese Attorney General, in his recent statement, made it very clear indeed that there's absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing by Kate and Gerry in any way, shape or form and journalists should bear that in mind when they examine the police files.

"A lot of this is historical detail drafted by officers who failed to find Madeleine and who quite wrongfully were going down inaccurate lines of supposition and assumption. We will not be commenting on any of this. "

Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family's holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 last year as her parents dined with friends nearby.