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Family joy as police name freed ‘slave’
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one of the three women allegedly held as slaves in London for 30 years was a Malaysian who went missing in the 1960s, police in Kuala Lumpur said yesterday, prompting a joyous reaction from the long-lost woman’s sister.
Malaysia’s top police official Khalid Abu Bakar, citing information provided by British police, confirmed the woman was Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab, The Star newspaper said.
Siti Aishah, who would now be 69, left to study in Britain around 1968 but her family lost track of her soon after.
“I will hug her and cry if she comes back home,” Siti Aishah’s eldest sister, Hasnah Abdul Wahab, 88, said when told of the police announcement.
“I thank Allah he has realized my prayers to meet Siti Aishah before I die,” she said in the family’s hometown of Jelebu in southern Malaysia, as she held a photo of Siti Aishah as a young woman.
“I will hold a feast to thank Allah. We have been looking for her for a long, long time.”
Police have arrested two people for holding the three women in a case that shocked Britain.
The three “slaves” who also included a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old Briton, were freed on October 25 after one of them secretly contacted a charity.
The couple, who are on bail, have been named as Indian-born Aravindan Balakrishnan and his Tanzanian wife Chanda.
Siti Aishah’s brother-in-law Mohamad Noh Mohamad Dom said his wife Kamar Mahtum had flown to London yesterday to identify her sister after a media outlet told the family earlier the woman could be her.
“We have mixed feelings,” he said. “Happy, because we believe we have found a lost family member, and sad, because we hear that she is sick and has been held captive for more than 30 years.”
Prominent Malaysian activist Hishamuddin Rais has been quoted by local media as saying Siti Aishah joined several other Malaysian students in a group in Britain called the “New Malayan Youth” in the 1970s.
She had studied at one of Malaysia’s elite schools and won a scholarship to study quantity surveying in England.
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