Sensing the worst, Louise alerted the police. Officers descended on the Nicolson Institute where Molly was a first year pupil, and Interpol was alerted.
Witnesses recalled seeing her earlier that day in the school grounds speaking with her older sister, Tahmina, 18, who lived in Pakistan but had flown to Stornoway to visit her younger sister. Tahmina was due to return to Pakistan with their father, Sajad Ahmed Rana, later that day.
As more reports came in, Louise’s world began to unravel. It emerged that Molly had left the island with her sister. The pair had boarded a flight to Glasgow where they were met by Sajad.
The three then boarded a flight for Lahore, one of Pakistan’s largest cities. The distraught mother told police of her fear that her estranged husband planned to force their daughter into an arranged marriage with a man twice her age.
To the police it seemed an open-and-shut case. Young Molly, also known as Misbah Iram Ahmed Rana, had been abducted and taken to Pakistan by her father. She faced a life of servitude in an unfamiliar country where she didn’t belong. Time was of the essence. Where was the 12-year-old and, more importantly, was she in any danger? In the days that followed, a shocked nation felt for Molly’s tearful mother — her legal guardian — as she made an emotional plea on television for her daughter’s safe return. Who could fail to be moved? The mother’s shaking hands. The crack in her voice.
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But all was not as it seemed. What at first appeared to be a disturbing but straightforward case of child kidnap began to turn into a more complex, less stereotypical story of a girl torn between two parents and two cultures. It would raise challenging questions about Britain today and the fraught issues of race and culture.
LOUISE met and fell in love with Sajad two decades ago. She converted to Islam and the couple married in a traditional Muslim ceremony. They lived in Glasgow and then moved to Blackburn in Lancashire where their four children — Tahmina, Omar, Adam and Molly — attended an Islamic academy.
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In 2001, however, the couple divorced and, two years later, Sajad moved to Pakistan with his daughters while Louise set up home in Stranraer with her new partner, Kenny Campbell.
She remained in occasional contact with her children but things changed last year when the Pakistani side of the family returned to Britain for the marriage of Omar, 21. The children, missing their mother, decided to stay with her in Stranraer. Gradually, Molly’s older siblings left to pursue their own lives elsewhere in Britain and Pakistan.
Fearful that Molly might be taken from her, Louise moved to Lewis last November without telling her family.
Contact between Louise and Molly and the rest of the family practically ceased, until last month when Sajad visited Stornoway and met his daughter at the school gate without her mother’s knowledge.
Last week in Glasgow, Molly’s brother Omar blamed their mother for the breakdown in relations. He claimed Molly was stopped from contacting her family and his sister had been distressed by her mother’s volatile relationship with her boyfriend — with whom she recently had a baby.
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A committed Muslim, it seems Molly also struggled to accept her mother’s decision to turn her back on Islam.
“It was a hostile environment,” said Omar. “There was a lot of arguing and shouting. I don’t know my mother any more, she has changed so much.”
As the international hunt for Molly escalated, friends rallied around Sajad. “He never planned to take Molly to Pakistan,” said Bashir Maan, a leading figure in Britain’s Pakistani community. “Sajad was shocked when Tahmina arrived in Glasgow with Molly, but she was clinging to them begging not to be left behind. She forced her father to take her with him.”
Not for the first time, Mohammed Sarwar, Labour MP for Glasgow Central, was asked to use his influence in Pakistan to help quell the mounting crisis. He flew to Lahore to meet Molly and her father. “He wanted to establish her frame of mind,” said Alasdair Morrison, the Western Isles Labour MSP. “He was satisfied she was being looked after and that the allegations of an arranged marriage were unfounded.”
Sarwar had concerns: first was that the girl had been taken against her will. “She has confirmed to me she came happily to Pakistan,” he told The Sunday Times.
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The MP also wanted to know if the father was planning to force her into marriage, and received an assurance there was no such plan.
The father also assured Sarwar that Louise was always welcome to spend time with Misbah in Pakistan and that mother and daughter could talk whenever they liked.
At a hastily arranged press conference last Friday, the girl at the centre of the story finally had her say. Dressed in traditional kurta smock, she spoke in a strong voice that belied her years.
“It was my choice,” she said. “I went with my sister. I would like to stay in Pakistan with my father.”
In a pointed aside she added: “And my name isn’t Molly, it is Misbah. I knew my mum would miss me, but I miss my family. It was hard to not see my family. I had to live with my mum and I wanted to live with my family. I thought I could live with my dad and still see my mum.”
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Back in Glasgow this more innocent version of events was backed up by Omar.
“My sister is not getting married; our father only wants what is best for us. He has told Molly she is free to return home.”
Yet returning to her mother’s semi-detached council house in a remote and windswept corner of Scotland could not be further from Molly’s mind. A life with a new school and new friends beckons in Pakistan.
Her father’s home in Lahore has 20 rooms and grounds the size of a football pitch. It sits behind a 6ft iron gate and painted perimeter walls and is protected by a camera, intercom and floodlights. Sajad is planning to send her to one of Lahore’s top girls’ schools.
“Misbah has made it pretty clear where she wants to be,” said Osama Saeed, a prominent member of Glasgow’s Muslim community who knows the family. “I have spoken with friends of the family and they are happy for Misbah. She is with her father and will be free to see her mother.”
Residents on Lewis are confused but happy that the circumstances of her disappearance appear not to be as sinister as they first seemed. “At least we know she is safe and well. It is her decision,” said the parent of one of Molly’s schoolfriends.
But this weekend, each of Molly’s parents vowed to use all the powers at their disposal to have their daughter live with them, setting the stage for what could be a difficult and protracted legal battle.
Her mother is lodging papers with the Edinburgh Court of Session while yesterday Sajad was granted interim custody by a court in Lahore. Both are expected to be present at another hearing on Wednesday.
Sajad will argue his former wife is not a fit person to look after Molly because she is a lapsed Muslim and living in an “illicit” relationship with a man to whom she is not married. But how will the two countries’ most powerful judges decide Molly’s fate? And what say, if any, will the youngster have in her immediate future? In the eyes of international law, the case is cut and dried.
Legal onlookers say Sajad and Tahmina broke the law by taking Molly from her mother, her legal guardian. Sources close to Campbell’s legal team say a criminal prosecution under the 1984 Child Abduction Act is “likely”.
Detectives with Northern constabulary, who have submitted a report to the procurator fiscal, are equally clear.
“The law has been broken,” said a spokesman. “Molly was not in a position to decide to leave the country. This is being treated as a case of abduction.”
Molly’s return is certain to be requested under the terms of a protocol set up with Pakistan in 2003 to tackle the problems posed by inter-racial marriages and the abduction of children.
Yet there are no guarantees that Pakistan’s most senior judges will force Molly to return.
“They will look at the family situation in Lahore, they will speak with Molly and her wishes will carry some weight,” said a source close to the case.
“It is likely they will not rule in the mother’s favour. This can drag on for years and by the time she is 16 years old she will be regarded as an adult.”
Ananda Hall, a London-based childrens’ lawyer who was involved in establishing the 2003 agreement, said: “It is often difficult for a UK parent to find the resources to bring proceedings in Pakistan. The protocol expects judges to return children in all cases, regardless of the child’s nationality, culture or religion, unless there are exceptional factors.” According to Reunite, a charity that specialises in international parental child abduction, more than 450 children were spirited out of Britain last year, an increase of 22% on 2004. The statistics are a worrying insight into the desperate measures parents are prepared to take to retain custody of their children.
BACK in the Western Isles, a sense of relief has returned to Lewis. The law has been broken, say residents, but news of Molly’s safety is welcome. “We have satisfied ourselves that Molly is safe,” says Morrison. “For now, she is going to stay in Pakistan, but she has asked for a mobile phone and a computer so she can remain in contact with her mother. “The complexity in this case is that it’s across continents and in the middle is a 12-year-old girl. This is a classic example of two parents falling out. It isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last.”
POWERFUL BRIDGE OVER OFTEN TROUBLED WATERS
IN the hubbub of Molly’s chaotic press conference in Lahore, there was a face in the crowd that many Scots would find familiar, writes Kenny Farquharson. The Asian man dressed in a summer suit and red open-necked shirt was Mohammed Sarwar, Labour MP for Glasgow Central and the first Muslim to win a seat in the House of Commons.
Sarwar had flown in from Scotland to mediate in the case. It just so happened that the well-connected politician had known the girl’s father for 15 years.
It is the third time he has mediated in sensitive cases involving Scots abroad. A decade ago he flew to Pakistan to rescue two young Glasgow girls, Rifat Haq, 20, and her sister Nazia, 13, from forced marriages.
More recently he was involved in delicate diplomacy to negotiate the extradition of three men wanted in connection with the death of Glasgow teenager Kriss Donald.
Sarwar’s political clout stems from his time as a student in Pakistan, where he met his political hero, the future prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who encouraged him to get involved in Pakistani politics.
Instead, Sarwar came to Scotland to make his fortune, but he kept up his political friendships. When Bhutto was arrested in one of Pakistan’s military coups, Sarwar organised a campaign to save him and won the backing of the Labour movement in Scotland. Bhutto was eventually executed, but his daughter Benazir never forgot Sarwar’s help and the two became friends. When she became prime minister it cemented Sarwar’s influence.
Remarkably, even when enemies of the Bhutto family eventually came to power, Sarwar’s influence in Pakistan remained strong — a sign of his political savvy.