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FRONT-PAGE APOLOGY: British tabloid The Daily Express apologises to the McCanns for suggesting they were responsible for their daughter's disappearance last year. -- PHOTO: AFP
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THE parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann have accepted an apology and more than half a million pounds in damages over tabloid newspaper stories suggesting they had caused their daughter's death.
Madeleine vanished on May 3 - a few days before her fourth birthday - from a hotel room during a family vacation in Praia da Luz in Portugal's Algarve region.
Weeks after the child's disappearance, Portuguese police named her parents as suspects. The couple say they were not involved in their daughter's disappearance.
But two papers belonging to the Express Newspapers group - The Daily Express and The Daily Star - were among those that went furthest in claiming that the couple were responsible for their daughter's disappearance in front-page stories nearly every day.
Kate and Gerry McCann said yesterday that Express Newspapers had agreed to pay them £550,000 (S$1.5 million).
The couple's lawyer said the money would go into a fund they have set up to help find their daughter.
The two newspapers ran front-page apologies yesterday. 'Kate and Gerry McCann: Sorry,' read their headlines.
In a statement by spokesman Clarence Mitchell, the McCanns stated that they believed their daughter was alive, saying; 'There is absolutely no evidence that Madeleine is dead or has been seriously harmed.'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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