Madeleine McCann's parents are to lodge a complaint with Portuguese police claiming that former detective Goncalo Amaral broke his country's strict judicial secrecy laws.

Gerry and Kate McCann's lawyer says they will formally accuse him of passing on information about the police investigation into Madeleine's disappearance before the case was closed - a criminal offence in Portugal.

Isabel Duarte, the couple's Portuguese lawyer, says Mr Amaral broke the law by sending a draft of his book to his publishers several months before the judicial secrecy period in the case was lifted in July 2008.

She said: "It seems that Goncalo Amaral passed information in the case files before the secrecy was lifted."

I'm beginning to think the former detective in the Madeleine McCann case has a point when he complains about the British media attacking him. Sky's Martin Brunt on Goncalo Amaral

Earlier, an emotional Kate McCann left court in Lisbon facing the prospect of hearing allegations that she and her husband covered up their daughter's death repeated in courtrooms across Europe for years to come.

Speaking in a low voice, Mrs McCann told waiting reporters she believed in the Portuguese justice system and that bringing the libel action against former policeman Mr Amaral was the right thing to do.

However, Mr Amaral has now declared that if he loses his bid to overturn their injunction on his book, Maddie: The Truth Of The Lie, he will appeal all the way through the country's courts and on to the European Court of Human Rights - a process that could take years.

The book, which was also made into a documentary on Portuguese TV, claims that Madeleine McCann died in the holiday apartment from which she vanished in May 2007.

 

In it, Mr Amaral - the lead detective on the investigation into the then-three-year-old's disappearance until being removed from the post five months later - goes on to say that the McCanns covered up the death.

Mr and Mrs McCann, who have always strongly denied the claims, launched a defamation case - saying they feared that if people believed their daughter was dead they would stop searching for her.

The past three days have seen a court in Lisbon debate whether an injunction obtained by the McCanns suspending further publication of the book and documentary should be allowed to stand.

Mr Amaral's lawyers have called a series of witnesses who have backed up the claims he made in the book, saying they believed them to be based on the facts of the investigation.

They have also tried to characterise the legal action as an attack on the Portuguese constitution and freedom of speech, a charge the McCanns deny.

The witnesses made many references to the hostile treatment of Portuguese detectives in general and Mr Amaral in particular at the hands of certain sections of the British media.

During the second day of the trial it was reported by the BBC that Mr Amaral had said "F*** the McCanns" - a claim he strongly denies, saying it was a misinterpretation of his Portuguese.

Ms Duarte accused Mr Amaral of trying to put the couple on trial in this week's hearings.

She said: "They are trying to judge in a civil court what they could not judge in a criminal court."

Ms Duarte said the McCanns were not surprised by the witnesses called by Mr Amaral.

"I am sorry my clients had to be submitted to this pain and this distress," she said.

"This is awful, but we knew that Pandora's Box was open. We are prepared to hear what they say."

A ruling in the current series of hearings, which will determine whether the temporary injunction on Mr Amaral's book will stand, will be made following further statements from two further witnesses on February 10.

However, the McCanns must then go back to court to make the ban permanent at a date yet to be confirmed.

They are also fighting a separate case claiming more than ?1m in damages from Mr Amaral.