Maddie "Tapas 7" Get £375,000 Payout to Benefit the McCann's Fund

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Friends of the parents of Madeleine McCann who were on holiday with the family when she disappeared are expected tomorrow to accept libel damages of £375,000.

The so-called Tapas 7 were dining with Kate and Gerry McCann at a restaurant at the time Madeleine was reported missing from her holiday apartment in May last year.

An admission of libel from Express Newspapers - publishers of the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday - is due to be read before Mr Justice Eady at the High Court tomorrow morning.

The money is expected to be donated to the Find Madeleine Fund which is paying for a private investigation into the hunt for the missing girl.

The 30,000-page dossier reveals how the Tapas 7 decided not to go back to Portugal for a "reconstruction" in May this year because Portuguese police would not give them reassurances they would not be arrested.

The group were baffled as to why police were calling them back for the re-enactment a full year after Madeleine went missing, and demanded to be told how it would help the inquiry.

In an email to police chief Paulo Rebelo in April, the McCanns' friend Rachel Oldfield wrote: "We are still very uncertain of the motives in organising such a re-enactment.

"We feel we would be making ourselves and our families extremely vulnerable by returning."