A British couple were arrested in Malaga, Spain, after they took their five-year-old son with cancer, Ashya King, from a hospital in Britain without doctors' consent to seek advanced medical treatment last Thursday.

Brett King and his wife, Nagmeh King, faces extradition from Spain back to Britain from where they had taken their extremely ill son Ashya King from Southampton General Hospital against doctors' advice. The boy, who has a stage IV brain cancer, underwent an emergency operation to remove the tumor, a medulloblastoma.

Brett King was not happy with the follow-up radiation and chemotherapy prescribed by the doctors in Britain and wanted to try out proton beam therapy, an extremely expensive and alternative treatment to radiotherapy. Though the proton beam therapy is not available in England, the NHS organizes and pays for the treatment of 99 children every year to be conducted overseas.

The Kings were told that the proton beam therapy will not help Ashya's condition. In a video that was uploaded a little before his arrest on YouTube, Mr. King feared that he and his wife would be stopped from being with their son, following a court order, since he kept raising questions about Ashya's treatment. The Kings had decided to take Ashya to France and later to Spain for what they think would be a 'better treatment' for their dying child.

The Australian quoted the doctors at the Southampton General Hospital saying that even though proton beam therapy has proved useful for few tumours, "there isn't evidence that this is a beneficial treatment".

The Kings were accused of "neglect" and were issued a European warrant by the British police. Brett and Nagmeh King had rushed to Spain hoping they could sell off some property to make sure that they had enough money for the treatment.

The London Times quoted Proton Therapy Centre Czech saying that they are ready to begin treatment on Ashya King as soon as they receive proper medical documentation from doctors in U.K. They also said that the cost will be tackled later.

The Kings will be in custody for another three days after which it will be decided whether they could be granted bail. Meanwhile, Ashya's condition is reported to be stable in a hospital in Malaga, where he was held under police guard.