General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
A twelve year old girl has left her mother’s home in Scotland and is now living in her father’s home in Pakistan, in violation of a previous UK court order awarding custody of the child to her mother.
Simultaneously, the name that the child goes by has changed from Molly Campbell to Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana.
A couple of weeks ago, the media reported that the girl had been abducted by her father, possibly to be forced into an arranged marriage with an adult stranger.
But now, a Pakistani court has ignored the UK custody order and awarded the father temporary custody of the girl at a hearing in Pakistan that the girl’s mother did not attend.
Now the official word is that “[s]he said her mother’s home had become a ‘living hell’ and her father’s Islamic culture in Pakistan suited her more.”
The girl is reportedly under 24 hour surveillance to protect her from being snatched back to the UK.
Pakistan is not a party to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, but there reportedly is a similar pact between Pakistan and the UK.
The child’s Pakistani attorney reported that his strategy will be to ” challenge the judicial protocol because it allows British wives of Pakistani men to keep children after dissolution of a marriage”.
Six of the attorney’s previous cases honoring the pact between Pakistan and the UK reportedly resulted in children being returned to the UK for custody decisions to be entered there. Prompting the change in strategy.
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