The couple from Flintshire who last year were at the centre of a controversial Internet adoption row, say they intend to go back to court to clear their name.

Alan and Judith Kilshaw attracted worldwide attention in January 2001, when they attempted to adopt American-born twins from the US over the Internet.

But their hopes were thwarted when social services took the babies off them and later returned them to America.

The couple have now said they are to appeal aganist a High Court ruling which deemed them unfit to adopt children.

Since losing the twins the couple have been forced to move to Chester from their farmhouse at Buckley in Flintshire after Alan Kilshaw, a solicitor, was struck off for improperly using clients' money to prop up his overdraft.

Mr Kilshaw, 47, said: "My main objective in appealing in Britain is to clear our names.

"The findings which were wrongly made against us prevent a lot of things from happening which could give us a future.

"It is important people know the truth because they have a very biased view at the moment - simply because the press was not allowed to report what happened in court.

"If that changes, hopefully we will be seen differently in Britain and that will obviously lift a large burden off our shoulders."

Judith Kilshaw is equally determined to clear their name.

She said: "I will fight it and I will go to the Court of Human Rights if I don't win."

In going to court the couple also hope to get the £38,000 in court costs and £120,000 in legal fees outstanding against them, lifted.

The couple, who have two young sons, orginally paid £8,200 to a US Internet adoption agency for the mixed-race twin girls, who were then six-months-old.

The girls, Belinda and Kimberley, then featured in a media circus before Flintshire Social Services took them into care, following an emergency order.

The couple soon got celebrity status, even featuring on a US chat show with a Californian couple who also claimed to have adopted the girls.

In April 2001, a High Court judge ruled the twins should be returned to the US and their future decided there.

Meanwhile the future of the twins is still not clear.

The girls are still in foster care after an application for them to be returned to their natural mother Tranda Wecker was turned down.

The mother has a month to appeal, before the girls are put up for state adoption.