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Three British children - two of them aged just three and five - were secretly smuggled on a plane ALONE to Pakistan by their two parents trying to stop them being taken into care.

The mother and father have been sent to prison for six months and 12 months respectively for deliberately scuppering attempts by UK social services to find them in Karachi.

The youngsters, aged 15, five and three, were placed on a 15-hour flight to Islamabad, without any adult supervision, before they were transferred to Karachi to be hidden with relatives.

Despite repeated attempts by Lancashire Police and Lancashire County Council to find them, the children have been unaccounted for since October 7.

The parents, who cannot be named, were jailed earlier this month for contempt after ignoring legal rulings that the children were wards of court and subject to a care order in the UK.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the mother, 34, was in fear of her ‘bullying and domineering’ husband, 48, who was acquitted of causing grievous bodily harm against her in June after she told a jury her injuries were ‘an accident.’

After police involvement in that case, social services in Preston became concerned for the children’s welfare, prompting the parents to escape to Cork in Ireland before the father was found and arrested.

From prison, the ‘resourceful’ father arranged for the three children to fly from Heathrow to Pakistan.

One lawyer, Samantha Bowcock, representing the missing children, told the parent: “Are you the sort of mother who will let their children get off a plane in a foreign country to wander through an airport to catch an interconnecting flight? That’s abuse at the highest range of the scale.”

Mr Justice Anthony Hayden QC said: “The children came to be put on the plane in an alarming and brutal manner. They were each put on that plane alone and unaccompanied.

“One cannot begin to imagine the anxiety that trip must have caused to those children in these circumstances in their tender years.

“What is difficult to understand is parents who have put a three-year-old on a plane to an alien continent. You must have become removed from the children’s most basic needs.”

The court was told how the mother has declined to make a criminal complaint against her husband for child abduction.

During a tense two-day hearing, the father was repeatedly rebuked by the judge for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of the children.

His wife, who has been with her partner for over 15 years, was clearly terrified about divulging the truth about the disappearance because of her husband’s influence, the judge said.

The judge told the tearful mother: “I think you are being controlled by your husband.

“I am giving you a last chance. Where are the children?”

The father had initially said the three children were ‘on a tour’ of Pakistan for a ‘cultural experience’, suggestions ridiculed by the judge, who said he believed the father had no intention of them ever returning.

One emotional email from the mother to the children’s guardian said: “I haven’t been able to get through to my babies since October. I need to know what’s happened to them. Shall I go to the police? My husband says relatives have them. I rang Pakistan and the phone gets put down.”

The children flew from Heathrow, where they were dropped off by their mother, to Islamabad where they caught an interconnecting flight to Karachi.

The British authorities believe the 15-year-old sister was the oldest in the group and no legal adult accompanied them.

The mother said: "I understood they'd be well looked after by the flight attendants and their uncle would pick them up in Karachi.

"I was told they'd have a good life there. My husband's sister said it was either that or being in the care of social services rather than the care of a family who loves them."