Conditor,your point is valid,but their getting off lightly is probably more of a class/income thing rather than geographical.

they definitely were criticised by the media in the aftermath

Once it became clear the parents had left 3 kids alone and then Kate refused to answer 48 questions criticism was bound to come.

Clarence Mitchell started to manipulate the media within 48 hours of the story breaking.

Yep barrowboy maybe I did overstate,which was wrong,the problem I have with the case is so, 1 why are the police so inept at finding the perpetrators,2 the media attack anyone with the slightest blemish,(have not 2 people been payed out on the media’s accusations?) 3 have not the Mcanns become some sort of celebrity status,... . Next it will be aliens,..this is a young girls life, not something in a Dickens novel

ist time poster............putting smiley faces at the end of  a sentence  doesn't make your comments funny

Parents to blame 100%, whether they had anything to do with her disappearance or not.
We all take our kids on holiday, but how many of us have left them alone THAT YOUNG !,
total selfishness and child neglect at the very least, The poor little girl, so sad.

A problem is that Dr Perlin (and his advanced methods) have offered to analyse the blood samples from behind the sofa and in the car. Blood that John Lowe could not analyse (if that's to be believed). Why would Operation Grange not bite his arm off unless there's a chance he discovers something they don't want the world to know.

they definitely were criticised by the media in the aftermath

Not by the UK media they weren't. They've been cosseted from day 1 by the UK media.

After the D notice was lifted?

The UK media was fully behind the Mccanns from day 1 up until 4 months later when the evidence against them became apparent. They didn't exactly turn on them at that point; just reported the facts of the case. From the 6 month point though the case seemed to stall and there was nothing new to report. The tabloids knew putting Madeleine on the cover sold a lot more copies, but there was no newsworthy reason to do so. The Daily Express decided to use the Diana solution, just make stuff up and put her photo on the front. So they printed nonsense like the Mccanns had sold her to a circus, they figured the real evidence against them put them beyond libel. But they died and won. From that point on the tabloids knew if they wanted Maddy on the front page it has to be with the abduction story.

Kate and Gerry McCann made an impassioned plea for press regulation after delivering an emotional account of their treatment by the tabloids, describing the string of "disgusting" and "offensive" stories published about them.

Appearing as witnesses at the Leveson inquiry into press standards, the McCanns gave the most powerful testimony heard so far, speaking for nearly two hours without a break as they described the ordeal they have been subjected to by parts of the media since their daughter Madeleine went missing in Portugal four years ago.

Kate McCann told a hushed courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice in London how she felt "totally violated" after the publication by the News of the World of her personal diaries in which she recorded her thoughts about her missing daughter.

She said the now defunct newspaper had showed "absolutely no respect for me as a grieving mother" when it ran the story in September 2008 under the headline Kate's Diary: In Her Own Words. "I'd written these words, my thoughts, at the most desperate time of my life," she said.

Mrs McCann added that she had talked about "climbing into a hole and not coming out" after the article appeared. "It made me feel very vulnerable and small. That whole week was very traumatic and every time I thought about it I couldn't believe the injustice."

Her husband, Gerry, said the couple wanted an investigation into how the diary, which was seized and copied by Portuguese police, was leaked to the Murdoch tabloid. Lord Justice Leveson, who has legal powers to summon witnesses and compel evidence, indicated that he might heed their call.

Mr McCann said British newspapers had declared "open season" on them a few months after Madeleine's disappearance in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007. It was "crass and insensitive", he argued, to say that because they engaged with the media in an attempt to find their daughter "the press can write whatever they like about you without punishment. There are standards but there are no penalties for not sticking to them. I see front page headlines every day … and I think information is being written and lives are being harmed by these stories and something has to change. The commercial imperative is not acceptable."

The McCanns' evidence is likely to strengthen the argument for a stricter regime of press regulation. Leveson, who was appointed by David Cameron at the height of the phone-hacking crisis, is due to report within a year.

The McCanns painted a disturbing picture of life at the centre of a media scrum. Gerry McCann said: "We expected the storm to calm with the passage of time but it continued day after day. We had anecdotal evidence from the British journalists in Praia da Luz that the story of Madeleine's disappearance had caught the imagination of the British public and was driving sales in the UK. As a result those journalists were under intense pressure from their newsdesks to file more copy."

Photographers camped outside the house, Kate McCann said, frightening their two young children. "There were several occasions where they would bang on the windows. Amelie said to me several times: 'Mummy, I'm scared.'"

Her husband accused a former editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler, of "berating" them for conducting a 2008 interview with Hello! magazine on the first anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance.

The couple sued Express Newspapers and secured unprecedented front-page apologies in 2008 after two of the group's titles ran stories which included the allegation that they had sold their daughter to pay off debts. Describing that as "nothing short of disgusting", Gerry McCann said he was amazed no one at Express Newspapers, which also paid the couple record damages of £550,000, had lost their job.

"I've seen no journalist or editor brought to account, be it the Express or any other group … they are repeat offenders, they should lose their privilege of practising," he said.

The McCanns argued that newspapers should not be allowed to take pictures of subjects when they are in public places. They also spoke movingly about their reaction to a front-page Daily Mirror story about Madeleine that declared: "She's dead". It was based on an article in a Portuguese paper, which quoted a source close to the police investigation who said they didn't know if she was alive or dead. Gerry McCann said they learned about the story at 11pm when they were just about to go to bed. "That was one of the most distressing headlines that was just taken from supposition. It was incredible."

Talking about her diary, Kate McCann said she believed that it was taken from her by Portuguese police and later returned. However, she said that someone must have photocopied the private diary and given it to the press.

She said there were minor differences between her own diaries and those that were published by the NoW, leading her to believe that they had been translated from Portuguese and back again.

The paper apologised a week after publishing the diaries and said: "We published the extracts in the belief held in good faith that we had Kate's permission to do so."

Leveson indicated that he might call the journalist who wrote the story to give evidence and might also question other senior executives at the paper, which was closed by Rupert Murdoch in July, about how the diaries were obtained.

Well there's plenty to question!

It's worth remembering that the McCanns actually broke Portuguese law by contacting the press whilst the investigation had barely started. They did this to get their story and narrative out there before the evidence came to light.

Once all the evidence pointed to no abduction and holes in their story, the press rightly targeted the McCanns, but their tactics allowed them to raise millions from public sympathy, claiming it was to aid in the search for Madeleine, when in reality it was used to sue/silence those who reported on the evidence/their involvement.

Tony Bennett was one of the first people to report on the facts of the case, and he, just like Amaral and some newspapers were sued into silence.

The Leveson enquiry was a joke,Kate claimed things like the DNA found in the car wasn't fluids (because it was dry!) and because this happened before the evidence was known, they were allowed to say whatever they wanted.

If the case is solved, the jollies to Portugal cease.