The Family Court acted quickly to assist four children whose parents attempted to travel to Syria and were suspected of intending to join Islamic State (IS).
The authorities in the UK and Moldova acted together to stop the parents, Asif Malik and Sara Kiran, from taking their children into a warzone. The children were made wards of court, even though they were outside the UK’s jurisdiction at the time, and remain under the protection of the High Court with the court’s permission required before any “important step” in their lives can be made. The family were detained in Ankara, Turkey, after being reported missing, and then deported “of their own free will” to Moldova, where they were detained and returned to the UK two days after the court became involved. Their passports and visas were impounded.
Mr Justice Munby said he released the judgment, Re M (children) [2015] EWHC 1433 (Fam), because the case raised “important questions in relation to the proper ambit of the court’s wardship jurisdiction and the use of what are commonly called super-injunctions”.
He said: “It is important that the public should be able to understand, and I trust appreciate, just how quickly, effectively and flexibly the family courts are able to respond, if need be outside normal court hours, in urgent cases and where events may, as here, be changing ‘on the ground’ very rapidly but far away.
“There is always, every minute of every day and night throughout the year, a judge of the Family Division on duty, ‘out of hours’, to deal with cases so urgent that they cannot wait. This case, I believe, shows the system working well.”
He explained that it was necessary to keep the authorities’ work behind the scenes secret so as not to alert the parents and further endanger the children.
