UK deputy leader criticizes ill boy case

This is an undated handout photos issued by England's Hampshire Police on Monday Sept. 1, 2014, of Brett King and Naghemeh King, the parents of Ashya King, who have legal proceedings against them continuing in Spain after they took the five-year-old brain cancer patient out of hospital without doctors' consent. Critically-ill 5-year-old boy Ashya King driven to Spain by his parents is receiving medical treatment for a brain tumor in a Spanish hospital as his parents await extradition to Britain, police said Sunday Aug. 31 2014. Officers received a phone call late Saturday from a hotel east of Malaga advising that a vehicle fitting the description circulated by police was on its premises. Both parents were arrested and the boy, Ashya King, was taken to a hospital, a Spanish police spokesman said. (AP Photo/Hampshire Police)

By Associated Press September 2, 2014 1 min read

LONDON (AP) – U.K. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg says it is inappropriate to throw the full weight of the law at a family who spirited their ill 5-year-old child out of the country in order for him to receive a revolutionary type of radiation therapy for a brain tumor.

Clegg told the BBC on Tuesday that his heart goes out to Brett and Naghemeh King.

The couple took their son, Ashya, out of Southampton General Hospital last week and traveled to Spain, where they planned to sell a property they own to pay for proton beam radiation therapy. The couple was arrested on a British warrant, and they are fighting extradition.

Clegg says as far as he can make out, the family was trying to do the best it could for Ashya.