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IN EARLY 1996, when I was still a Glasgow councillor , I went to Pakistan to free two sisters from the city who had been abducted and forced to marry.

Rifat Haq, 20, was forced by her father Abdul to marry her cousin, Khalid Mahmood, a 27-year-old, previously unknown to her, on June 29, 1995.

This was shocking enough, but the day after Rifat’s forced marriage, her sister Nazia, a child of 13, was coerced into marrying another cousin, Mohammad Iqbal, who was reportedly 40 years old.

This was illegal under both Pakistani and Islamic law.

The father had told all those concerned that Nazia was 16.

The marriages took place after the family, also including mother Fatima and a third sister, Somera, arrived in Pakistan for what they believed was a holiday.

When they landed in Punjab, they were kidnapped by their father, half-brother Zulfikar Haq and a number of their father’s relatives.

Two weeks later the father forced Rifat and Nazia to marry.

Journalist Audrey Gillan, who had been following the story and had travelled to Pakistan to speak to the family, came to me and asked me if I could do anything to help.

I told her that I was extremely sympathetic to the plight of the girls and that I would consult with the community leaders and get back to her.

I consulted with half a dozen leading members of the Pakistani community in Glasgow .

Every one advised against my becoming involved, because it could damage my reputation, especially with the conservative element in the community.

But I decided that this injustice could not remain unchallenged and if the girls were being held against their will, I would go to Pakistan to bring them home.

I did not realise then that the repercussions for me would turn out to be so serious.

The controversy ignited in the community over the Haq girls would become a focal point for my political enemies.

It turned out that I had a distant cousin in the town of Jahania, in Punjab, where the father Abdul Haq was living.

I phoned the relative and he warned me Haq was an important member of the local community and that taking him on in his local area would not be easy.

It was critical that my best friend in Pakistan, Irfan Mahmood Khan, was deputy chief of police for Punjab. He was able to get the warrants to remove the sisters and their mother to a place of safety.

They were taken to a relative’s home in Burewala, east of the city of Multan, where they were put under police protection. On March 26, 1996, I flew to Lahore with Audrey and Shelley Jofre of BBC Scotland.

We learned Abdul Haq had been in the High Court in Lahore that morning. He had applied for an injunction to prevent the girls leaving the country. He alleged that I had kidnapped his daughters and should not be allowed to take them out of Pakistan.

When I met the women, Rifat told me that, at one stage early in their abduction, the father took her mother and her youngest sister, Somera, to a graveyard in Jahania.

He then told the mother that if she did not obey his orders and accept the marriages, this was where she would finish up.

They had been beaten and drugged and locked up for days on end to force them into submitting to the marriages.

Nazia said on the day of her marriage, she was asked to sign a set of papers and refused.

(Image: George Hunter)

Her mother was then brought into the room and a gun put to her head. Nazia was told if she didn’t sign the papers, her mother would be shot dead.

Probably the most harrowing aspect of Nazia’s story came out when she told Shelley how her 40-year-old husband tied her up and forced her to have sex.

Whatever doubts I may have had about whether what I was doing was the right thing vanished forever after that late-evening discussion with the two Haq sisters.

We travelled to the British High Commission in Karachi, where the girls, all UK citizens, were issued passports to replace the ones confiscated by their father.

Their mother was still a Pakistani citizen but my friend Tariq Pervez, director general of the Federal Investigation Agency, eventually negotiated a safe passage for her.

Back in Scotland, I was glad it was over and we had the girls home safe. But it was far from over.

The events provoked a political war in the Glasgow Pakistani community.

A few days later, a “community” meeting was held at Pollokshields Development Association Hall.

It condemned my actions in Pakistan and called for a boycott of my cash and carry warehouses, because I had brought disgrace to the local Muslim community.

Mike Watson, my opponent for the Govan constituency Labour nomination, made cheap references to “acts of derring-do in Pakistan” and dismissed my actions there as an adventure and “a political stunt”.

The Haq sisters, Rifat and Nazia, remained resolute in my support.

They spoke out to say that before my intervention, there had been times while they were in Pakistan when they were in fear of their lives and had each contemplated suicide.

Then, in December 1996, Abdul Haq returned from Pakistan and held a media conference organised by my political enemies, including Peter Paton, the Independent Labour prospective parliamentary candidate for Govan.

Paton told the media, Haq felt his personal reputation and integrity “have been damaged by Councillor Sarwar’s involvement in a private family matter”. When questioned by their voters about this business what did they say? That for the sake of multiculturalism it is necessary to accept that a father can traffic his 13-year-old daughter to have her raped by a 40-year-old man.

They then announced that Haq and his son Zulfikar were suing me for defamation and claiming damages of £1million, later doubled to £2million.

But in January 1997, Fatima Haq was successful in gaining a court order banning Abdul Haq from visiting the family home in Glasgow’s west end, and from having any access to his daughters. This legal ruling vindicated my decision to help the women of the Haq family.

When the defamation action came to court, it was dismissed.

People often ask me if, confronted with a similar situation to that involving the Haq sisters, would I do the same again.

My answer, after everything I learned of forced marriage, is without any hesitation an emphatic “Yes”.