Taxpayers fund parents’ battle over Afghan boy who has never been to UK

A six-year-old Afghan boy who has never lived in Britain is at the centre of a taxpayer-funded family court dispute between his separated parents.

The boy’s parents left him with an uncle in Afghanistan when he was a month old, judges in London have heard. They then travelled to England and subsequently separated.

The boy’s mother wants the boy brought to England, but her estranged husband says their son has disappeared from the uncle’s home and his whereabouts are unknown.

She refuses to believe that and her lawyers asked Mr Justice Peter Jackson to order the father to “give information” about the boy’s location.

Lawyers for the father said an “investigation” into the boy’s whereabouts was already under way in Afghanistan and there was no need for an English court to intervene.

The judge was told both parents were “habitually resident” in the UK and had the “benefit of publicly funded lawyers”.

Mr Justice Jackson concluded that the father knew where the boy was and he agreed to make the order the mother asked for.

He said the case was “highly unusual” because the boy was “not known” to have “been present in this country at any stage”, but it was right for him to make the ruling as the father resided in England. He ruled no one in the case should be identified.