Misbah’s father appeals in custody verdict
Bureau Report

LAHORE—The Pakistani father of a British girl at the centre of a international custody dispute lodged an appeal on Saturday against a court order to send her back to her mother in Scotland within a week.
Police in Britain launched an investigation in August after the 12-year-old girl called Misbah Irum Ahmed Rana, known in Britain as Molly Campbell, left her mother in the Western Isles of Scotland to travel to Lahore to be with her father. The girl says she wants to stay in Pakistan, and a lawyer for the father, Sajad Ahmed Rana, filed an appeal, asking the Lahore High Court to review its decision on Wednesday that she should be sent back to Britain within a week.
“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,” lawyer Abdul Basit told. At least two judges are now expected to consider the intra court appeal challenging the decision by another judge. “I am determined not to go back to live with her mother”, Misbah told newsmen. “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,” Misbah said.
“But I still keeping 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,” molly said. The girl’s mother, Louise Campbell, had refused to come to Pakistan for any hearings, but speaking after the victory on Wednesday, she sought to reassure her daughter by insisting the girl’s views would be taken into consideration by a Scottish court that has still to decide over custody. A court had earlier granted the mother interim custody. Pakistan and Britain signed an agreement in 2003 under which police and judicial authorities in both countries help each other to resolve some 400 cases of disputes over children brought from Britain to Pakistan every year. Louise Campbell’s lawyers in Scotland hope the girl would be returned to Scotland using that protocol.
Sajjad Ahmed Rana, the father of Molly Campbell, 12, has asked for the cancellation of the decision against him and the suspension of an order to hand the girl over to the British High Commission while the appeal is heard. Rana has argued in the appeal that the girl’s mother, Louise Campbell, is living with a man and has borne a child out of wedlock, and so cannot be given custody of a Muslim girl. “Louise Fairley Campbell has become an apostate. She had confessed to be living in continued adultery relationship with Kenny Campbell, thus she has become disentitled to retain the custody of a Muslim girl,” Rana said on Saturday.