Following hours of questioning, Gerry and Kate McCann have been officially named suspects in the investigation of their four-year-old daughter’s sudden disappearance, a family spokesman said on Friday.

"Kate and Gerry McCann have both been today declared 'arguidos' with no bail conditions. No charges were brought against them," said their lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu.

The statement was released after Portuguese detectives re-interviewed the two based on new forensic evidence arrived this week from various locations.

According to family spokeswoman, Justine McGuiness, the investigators believe they found traces of Madeleine's blood in a car the couple rented 25 days after their daughter was reported missing.

"They made a series of ridiculous allegations," McGuiness said.

The McCanns, who initially wanted to return from the Algarve to their home in Rothley, Leicestershire with their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelia, will now remain in Portugal and fight to prove their innocence.

A friend of the family speaking in Portugal said that "At the moment it is their intention to stay here. However, they would very much like to go home. They are in a position at the moment whereby they have been made arguidos. They obviously want to help the police. I think they feel that it wouldn't be right to have jumped on a plane to go home."

According to Gerry McCann’s sister, Philomena, the latest turn of evens made police offer Kate a plea bargain.

"If you say that you killed Madeleine by accident and then hid her and disposed of the body, then we can guarantee you a two year jail sentence or even less," Philomena McCann was quoted by euronews as saying.

The deal was strongly denied by Madeleine’s mother, who now fears the investigation is no longer focused on finding her daughter, but on trying to find a clean closure on the case.

"The suggestion that Kate is involved in Madeleine's disappearance is ludicrous," Gerry McCann, also 39, wrote in his blog before he too was labeled a suspect.

"We will fight this all the way and we will not stop looking for Madeleine," he vowed.

"The notion that even accidentally they killed their daughter, hid her body, then put her body in a car hired 25 days later while the glare of the international publicity is on them, and when they are always with friends and family, is fatuous beyond words," Kate  McCann’s uncle Brian Kennedy was quoted by the BBC as saying.

"I just find the notion repulsive," he added.  

Over the past several months, Madeleine McCann, who vanished from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal's Algarve on May 3, raised the interest of an entire planet shortly becoming the world's most famous missing child case.

"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling put up a $3 million reward while soccer player David Beckham filmed a TV appeal. Ordinary people donated $2 million for the search.