An attorney for a woman who fled Singapore with her young son to escape an allegedly abusive husband urged a federal appeals court yesterday to reverse a lower court decision that would require her to take the boy back to Singapore.
The woman, Lee Jen Fair, and her husband, Abdollah Naghash Souratgar, looked on as Randy Mastro of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that Southern District Judge P. Kevin Castel’s (See Profile) repatriation order "underestimated" the "grave risk" posed to 4-year-old Shayan by a return, and "overestimated" the value of a pledge made by his father, a native of Iran, to litigate custody only in Singapore civil court.
