A YORK father has denied child abduction after being stopped from taking his son out of the country.

The man and his two-year-old son were found at Luton airport when police boarded a plane about to take off for Slovenia.

The 34-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared at York Magistrates Court yesterday and denied abducting the child. He is now set for another court appearance this week before a trial in front of magistrates.

The child’s mother first went to the police in York late last week with concerns that her husband was about to take their son out of the country. The couple’s marriage was breaking up, the court heard, and her husband had said he wanted to take custody of their son.

On Saturday when she got home from work to find her husband and son gone and suitcases and clothes missing, and she called police again.

Her husband was arrested at the airport by border police and returned to York for questioning by North Yorkshire Police’s Major Crimes and Protecting Vulnerable Persons Units.

After hearing details of the case senior magistrate Richard Goodacre agreed to release the man on bail and allow the trial to be heard in a magistrate’s court rather than sent to the higher Crown Court.