Ashya King 'completely cured' by Proton Beam and convalescing on Costa del Sol

He has finished a course of Proton Beam treatment in Prague and is now learning to speak again, laughing and playing in the park with his siblings, and can walk, eat and drink without help, say his mum and dad.

Although the family did not expect 'a miracle cure' with the procedure in Prague, they hoped to give their little boy a few more months or years to live and a better quality of life.

But his last examination showed 'no sign at all' of the Stage-four tumour, the family reveals.

They say this unexpected news is their wildest dream come true, and has made everything they went through in their battle to have their son treated as they wished 'well worth it'.

The youngster was made a ward of court by Portsmouth City Council in September 2014 and an international manhunt launched for his parents, Brett, 51 and Naghemeh, 45, with medics at Southampton General Hospital claiming 'time was running out' for the child as he needed to be fed by a machine.

After two days, a furious Brett posted a video on YouTube saying: “Call off this ridiculous chase,” and showing his son sitting on his lap with his feeding machine properly connected, having kept it charged through the car battery when mains electricity was not available.

The couple had wanted to give him a pioneering therapy known as Proton Beam treatment for an 'incurable' Stage-four intra-cranial meduloblastoma, or brain tumour.

This procedure is not available in the UK, although possible to get from a clinic in Prague, Czech Republic – but Ashya's doctors told them this 'would not work'.

According to the family, the paediatric oncology department wanted to 'try giving him a bit of chemotherapy' to 'see whether it worked', and whole-brain radiotherapy at four times the strength a child his age would normally undergo – a procedure that would leave him 'like a vegetable', with limited mental capacity, no use of his faculties, blind, deaf and dumb.

Brett says the doctors told him and his wife that 'if they kept asking questions', the hospital would acquire wardship of their son so that they would not have a say in his treatment and could be prevented from setting foot on the premises, meaning the little boy would be in hospital alone.

Faced with this terrifying threat, they decided to keep their intentions quiet and, after fully researching what Ashya needed, ensured they had sufficient feed, drugs and oxygen to keep him in the best of health, and left the UK without telling anyone.

They had decided to travel to Spain and sell their holiday home in Casares (Málaga province) to pay for the Proton Beam therapy, then take Ashya to Prague.

Authorities in the UK initially tried to claim that the parents' being Jehovah's Witnesses may have something to do with their 'refusing treatment' for their son, but the religious community information office pointed out that the only medical procedure it is against is blood transfusions, of which Ashya was not due to have any.

Naghemeh and Brett were forced to spend a night in a Madrid prison whilst their five-year-old was in a Málaga hospital 700 kilometres away without his mum and dad, a situation they all found extremely distressing – and the parents were even warned they would be deported and their son kept in hospital in Spain.

Eventually, Conservative premier David Cameron and deputy prime minister, Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg, stepped in to call for the charges to be dropped and the family reunited, with the former appealing for 'an outbreak of common sense'.

Ashya's older siblings have been going to school in the Marbella area during this time, and Ashya has been monitored by Madrid's 12 de Octubre University Hospital under Argentinian oncologist Dr Hernán Cortés-Funes, and also by Marbella's HC International Hospital.

Thanks to donations from the UK public and cancer charities, Ashya was able to undergo the full course of treatment in Prague without the Kings having to sell their home near Marbella, meaning they can enjoy a long family break in the sunshine in the knowledge their child is now completely disease-free.