Kate and Gerry McCann have not been formally cleared over their daughter Madeleine's disappearance, Portugal's Supreme Court has said.

The removal of their "arguido", or formal suspect, status is not technically "equated to proof of innocence", the country's top judges explained.

An investigation into the parents was dropped in 2008 due to a lack of evidence.

In the Supreme Court's 76-page dossier, the judges added that there were "serious concerns" over the theory that Madeleine, aged three, had been abducted from their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, in May 2007.

But judges made it clear that it would be wrong for anyone to draw any inferences about the couple's guilt or innocence from their ruling.

The judges said in a statement: "It should not be said that the appellants were cleared via the ruling announcing the archiving of the criminal case.

"The archiving of the case was determined by the fact that public prosecutors hadn't managed to obtain sufficient evidence of the practice of crimes by the appellants.

"There is therefore a significant, and not merely a semantic difference, between the legally admissible foundations of the archive ruling."

Ex-detective Goncalo Amaral was cleared in an ongoing libel case last week.

The McCanns, from Leicestershire, went to court in Portugal after Mr Amaral wrote in a book that he believed they had something to do with Madeleine's disappearance.

They won and courts said the officer should pay them half a million euros (£430,000) in damages.

But Mr Amaral appealed, and the courts ruled in his favour due to freedom of expression laws.

The judges, who do not hold criminal authority in Portugal, added their job was not to decide if the McCanns were responsible for the disappearance of Madeleine.

The Metropolitan Police have been assisting the family with the search for clues and visited the holiday resort in 2014.

A spokesman for the McCann family said: "It's entirely a matter for their lawyers."