Molly Gets Reprieve To Stay In Pakistan

Molly Campbell, the schoolgirl at the centre of an international custody battle, will not spend Christmas with her mother in Scotland after she was today ordered to remain in Pakistan while the countrys Supreme Court decides her fate.

The 12-year-old, who wants to be known as Misbah Iram Rana and to live as a Muslim in the Pakistani city of Lahore, wept last week as a judge ordered that she return to her mother in the Western Isles.

However, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the chief Supreme Court justice, temporarily suspended that order today pending the outcome of an appeal lodged at the Supreme Court in Islamabad by her father Sajad Ahmed Rana.

Mr Rana, 45, said that he was delighted with the decision. "I am very relieved and feel very happy that the judge has ordered her to stay here. I am very hopeful," he said.

The case was adjourned until the second week of January. Mr Chaudhry told authorities that the girl must not be taken outside the country until he had issued a final verdict.

Mollys disappearance from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in August sparked an international police hunt and led to fears that she had been abducted by her father with the aim of marrying her off to a Muslim twice her age.

However, days later the 12-year-old resurfaced in Lahore, where she denied suggestions of an arranged marriage and claimed that she had begged her father to take her away from the "hellhole" of Stornoway.

Her mother, Louise Campbell, was given interim custody by the Court of Session in Edinburgh last year, and Molly begged her to let her remain with her father in Pakistan.

The schoolgirl claimed that she had been denied contact with her father and siblings, that she had been racially abused by locals on Lewis and that her mother had not allowed her to be a Muslim.

Shona Smith, the Scottish-based lawyer acting for Mrs Campbell, said: "Having last week been told that Molly would be back in Scotland this week, Louise is clearly very disappointed that this has been delayed.

"She does, however, understand the importance of the proper court procedure being followed."

Last week Judge Saquib Nisar at the High Court in Lahore ordered that Molly be handed to the custody of the British High Commission in Islamabad. Outside court, Molly looked visibly distressed.

She said: "Im really, really, really upset and angry with what the judge said. He didnt listen to anything I told him. The fact that Im going to go back to live with my mum on Lewis, I dont want to go back to that horrible place, theres fighting going on there all the time."

Mollys parents were married in a Muslim ceremony in Glasgow in 1984, at a time when Mrs Campbell was said to have been a devout Muslim and even stricter in her beliefs than her husband. They had two sons and two daughters.

After the marriage broke down, the children went to live with their father in Pakistan but later came back to Britain to stay with their mother. According to court papers filed in Lahore, they moved out one by one after becoming disillusioned with her "lifestyle". Mollys siblings - Adam, 16, Tahmina, 18, and Omara, 21 - are all now understood to be living in Pakistan with their father.

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