19/02/08

Kate and Gerry McCann have been threatened with legal action after using the photograph of a missing Spanish girl in their poster campaign.

The father of five-year old Mari Luz Cortes, who disappeared in January, said he had not given the couple permission to use his daughter’s picture in 17,400 A3-size prints distributed across Spain and Portugal yesterday.

The posters show Madeleine McCann, four, Mari and Jeremy Vargas, seven, who vanished near his home in Gran Canaria in March last year.

Builder Juan Jose Cortes, 34, from Huelva, said: “Why didn’t they ask us? The three cases are not connected. We are with our lawyers.”

McCann spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “We did have permission from the family.”