LONDON: London’s High Court awarded libel damages on Thursday to friends of Madeleine McCann’s parents, who were with the couple on the night their daughter was abducted in Portugal, over stories alleging they were involved in the missing.

The group, known as the ‘Tapas 7’, won 375,000 pounds from The Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers which published articles last year suggesting the friends had lied about the four-year-old’s abduction.

Madeleine went missing in May 2007 from a holiday apartment in the southern resort of Praia da Luz while her parents Gerry and Kate McCann were having a meal with their friends at a nearby tapas restaurant.

At a hearing at the High Court on Thursday, the two papers admitted the stories were false and issued apologies to Jane Tanner, Russell O’Brien, Fiona Payne, David Payne, Matthew Oldfield, Rachael Oldfield and Dianne Webster.

“The defamatory stories written about us were not only extremely damaging on a personal level but we strongly feel were detrimental to the search for Madeleine,” said a statement from the group read outside court by Fiona Payne.

“Although we are very pleased with today’s result, it changes little when Madeleine’s plight remains ongoing she is still missing and her abductor is still free.”

In March this year, Kate and Gerry McCann won 550,000 pounds in libel damages from the two papers over stories suggesting they might have killed their daughter and covered up her death.

The couple were named as formal suspects by Portuguese police a few months after their daughter’s abduction, but were later cleared of any involvement by Portugal’s public prosecutor.—Reuters