My bizarre exchange with Ashya King’s father
The longer the saga runs the less explicable it becomes. So it is that the parents of Ashya King, released from prison, did not visit their desperately ill son upon release.
Instead they went to what their lawyer called a “press conference“, involving a major dog-leg to Seville at least two hours drive west of Malaga.
That may raise some eyebrows for two parents who say they wish to get to their son as fast as possible.
The “press conference” was nothing of the sort – merely statements to camera by Brett King in Spanish then English, in their lawyer’s office. Though it is normal in Spain and apparently accepted by Spanish media.
He reflected on their time in prison and his wife’s almost constant crying and then thanked David Cameron, the police and media for playing a part in their release.
As political interference into the UK’s supposedly non-political judicial process goes, yesterday’s Cameron/Clegg initiative takes some beating. Let us hope neither they nor anyone else comes to regret it.
Understandably Mr and Mrs King were keen to drive east to Malaga, and their excitable lawyer Juan Fernandez Diaz called a halt to it all there and then.
In Malaga, assorted regional health officials assembled at the city’s University Hospital. Outside perhaps 50 media crews, for many of whom this is a simple tale of heroic parents taking on the system and winning against the odds.
But this saga is all about easy popular emotion and difficult less popular issues.
After the lengthy drive east from Seville, Brett and Naghmeh King arrived to a predictably chaotic welcome at Malaga’s University Hospital.
As Brett King appealed to Spanish police, saying he wished to speak to reporters, our impromptu interview began.
I asked him – since it matters most – how Ashya is right now. He looked me in the eye and said: “I have no idea, I can’t get to see him.”
In the bizarre exchange that followed, I said: “What do you mean, you’re his father?”
He told me that if he tried to see his son, he would be arrested because, he said, he is a ward of court. When I asked him what he intended to do therefore, he said I shall go into the hospital and be arrested.
At that point, I rather felt I was standing between a man, a father, and his dangerously ill son. And it seemed better for all for Mr King to gain access to the hospital and whatever legal fate may await him.
One can only hope that this turns out to be a minor legal wrangle and we don’t have a situation where a father and mother travel hundreds of miles across Spain, only to be stopped from seeing their son a few metres from his bedside.
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