A HIGH Court judge in London has issued an urgent international plea for the return home of four British children who have been kept in Pakistan by their father.

The children's distraught mother, Asma Akhtar, of Banbury, was granted an order in July making the children wards of court and requiring their immediate return.

It is now more than six months since the children were supposed to return from what was supposed to be a brief holiday.

The wardship order was linked to a law enforcement protocol between the English and Pakistani legal authorities in the hope of securing the children's return to the UK.

But the father, Mohammed Zahoor Akhtar, obtained court orders in Pakistan preventing the removal of the children from that country.

As a result, the children - Halima, 10, her four-year-old sister Harja and their brothers Ali, five, and Haier, two - have still not been returned to the family home in Banbury.

On October 31, Family Division judge Mr Justice Ryder gave permission for the case to be raised in the House of Commons by Paul Rowen MP, who was concerned about the children, at the instigation of their mother.

Now the judge has lifted reporting restrictions which normally apply to cases involving children in the hope that wider publicity will secure the children's return.

The parents and the children, all UK citizens, went to Dubai during the school holidays.

With the mother's consent, the children were then taken to Pakistan by their father for the remainder of the vacation on the understanding that they would return to the UK on April 26.

The judge has given an assurance that, on the return of the children, the court will deal with any dispute "from first principles, without assuming one parent has a greater right over the other and at all times pursuant to the welfare interests of the children".