Amaral wrote a book directly accusing the McCanns, but not of murder, which is what the enquiry he nominally headed did accuse them of.
Was that right?
To me this shows the dangers being repeated here.
The parents were made suspects via an official process, but details were made available via leaks - and then that evidence wasn't reliable enough to stand up charges, so you end up with accusations from the state, but no criminal process.
Same thing has so far been repeated here.
I worry this kind of power can easily be misused. e.g say Prosecutors accused an activist german media org of receiving sanctioned Russian funding, but then never subsequently bought charges.
You may say this is farfetched,
but it actually happened in the Wirecard case. The FT in London published articles accusing Wirecard of fraud (which turned out to be true). Wirecard ran to German prosecutors and claimed (with no real evidence) that FT journos were colluding with short sellers. Because Wirecard was a trusted german company, the authorities opened a public investigation into the FT
So essentially the FT and the key journalists were smeared by the Finance prosecutors office based on false accusations.
This is why, IMO, prosecutors should not do this. If they want to accuse people in public, based on evidence, they should file charges.
Just noting: Amaral did not work for the state when he wrote his book.