ISLAMABAD, 3 December 2006 — The father of a 12-year-old Scottish girl yesterday filed an appeal in a Lahore court to keep her in Pakistan, days after another court ordered her to be sent back home to her mother.
The case of Molly Campbell, also known as Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana, has drawn international attention since August when she arrived in Lahore from her mother’s home in Scotland with her Pakistani father and elder sister.
On Wednesday, a judge at the Lahore High Court, Saquib Nisar, ruled that the girl must be handed over to the British authorities within a week so that she could be taken to Scotland, where her mother lives. The girl’s mother, Louise Campbell, has said she was awarded custody of her daughter in 2005, and that her daughter was taken illegally from Scotland.
Yesterday, Dr. Abdul Basit, a lawyer for the girl’s father, Sajad Ahmed Rana, told reporters he had filed an appeal against the court ruling.
“I filed the appeal and requested the court to give the custody to the father as Misbah is a Muslim girl and a Pakistani passport holder,” Basit said. At least two judges are now expected to consider the intra-court appeal challenging the decision by another judge. However, it wasn’t immediately clear when the appeal would be heard, although courts usually hear such appeals quickly.
Rana said his daughter has the right to decide for herself where to live. “We expect the courts give justice to us in the name of Islam and in the name of Pakistan,” he said.
The girl said yesterday in a phone call from Lahore that she prefers to live in Pakistan with her father and that she left her mother because she was living with another man.
“I have nobody related to me in Scotland, and my mother is living with a stranger- a stranger who is nobody to me,” she said.
“I do not want to be in that hell again. I want to live with my father.” The girl said she has been feeling scared since Wednesday’s court ruling. “I want to be a Muslim for a while in my life,” she said.
In an interview with the BBC, the girl said, “I was really, really, really upset and I was really angry about what the judge said. When the judge left I was crying so much. And when we were coming back I was crying, I was crying so much all day,” she told the BBC. “But I still keep thinking ‘no that’s not true, he’s going to change his mind’ — I’m going to have to stay here, I have to stay here, I am not going to go back,” the BBC quoted Iram as saying.
