This was the take of the Portuguese prosecutors:
The non involvement of the arguidos parents of Madeleine in any penally relevant action seems to result from the objective circumstances of them not being inside the apartment when she disappeared, from the normal behaviour that they adopted until said disappearance and afterwards, as can be amply concluded from the witness statements, from the telephone communications analysis and also from the forensics' conclusions, namely the Reports from the FSS and from the National Institute for Legal Medicine.
To this can be added that, in reality, none of the indications that led to their constitution as arguidos was later confirmed or consolidated. If not, let us see: the information concerning a previous alert of the media before the polices was not confirmed, the traces that were marked by the dogs were not ratified in laboratory, and the initial indications from the above transcribed email, better clarified at a later date, ended up being revealed as innocuous.
Even if, hypothetically, one could admit that Gerald and Kate McCann might be responsible over the child's death, it would still have to be explained how, where through, when, with what means, with the help of whom and where to they freed themselves of her body within the restricted time frame that would have been available to them to do so. Their daily routine, until the 3rd of May, had been circumscribed to the narrow borders of the 'Ocean Club' resort and to the beach that lies next to it, unknowing the surrounding terrain and, apart from the English friends that were with them on holiday there, they had no known friends or contacts in Portugal.
X X X
Add to that that PJ Inspector Joao Carlos concluded Gerry was in the Tapas Restaurant at the time of Kate's alert.
Pretty much non of Amaral's accusations can be verified or sustained.
The Court covers this aspect - the judgement is well worth a read - though quite hard going
The first instance court appeared to find that GA went beyond offering his mere opinion
The Supreme Court placed weight on the fact that so much of the foundation was public domain already. So the point about them being made suspects, or the dog videos going public etc, was that all the public sphere debate was already happening, so in the Court's view, GA could offer his view.
I tend to think that the real damage to the plaintiffs was done by that material becoming public in the first place.