Grandmother of brain tumour boy criticises police
London (AFP) - The grandmother of a five-year-old boy with a brain tumour criticised police for arresting his parents after they removed him from hospital against medical advice.
Spanish police arrested Brett and Naghmeh King after they took their son Ashya from a British hospital and left for the Costa del Sol to seek a treatment for their son that is not available in Britain.
"I'm very angry, I think it's been taken too far, much too far," Ashya's paternal grandmother Patricia King told the BBC.
"Brett couldn't believe it, that Ashya's pictures were all over the papers and they said he'd kidnapped his own son. He's really upset."
"The police have talked to me and my flat's been searched. Two policewomen and a police man came to my home with a warrant and searched my flat. I'm disgusted."
British police said they had acted appropriately after being advised by doctors there was a potential threat to Ashya's life.
The boy's parents were arrested on Saturday evening in southern Spain following an international manhunt.
Brett King, 51, and Naghemeh King, 45, will appear before a judge in Madrid on Monday, a judicial source told AFP.
Meanwhile, their son Ashya was said to be "in a stable condition and under police guard" in the paediatric oncology department at the Regional University Hospital in Malaga, a spokesman for the hospital told AFP on Sunday.
A police spokesman said earlier that "the child is receiving hospital care, the parents are in detention," adding that the couple's five other children are staying in an undisclosed location and being looked after by the adults among them.
Ashya King was removed from a hospital in Southampton in southern England on Thursday, sparking an immediate search for the boy's parents.
Interpol issued a global alert on Friday to its 190 member countries, dramatically ratcheting up the hunt.
The parents were eventually tracked down to a guesthouse called Hostal Esperanza on the Costa del Sol, around 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Malaga in southern Spain, after they were recognised by an employee.
"It's my colleague that alerted the police," an employee at the hostel told AFP by telephone. "She had seen them on an online newspaper."
Authorities in Britain, France and Spain have been racing against the clock to locate Ashya, who was operated on just one week ago and requires feeding through a nasal tube and a machine, raising fears that it could run out of batteries.
