69-Year-Old Malaysian Woman Rescued After 30 Years Of Slavery In London

69-year-old Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab who was rescued from her alleged 'captors' in North London last month, has promised to return to Malaysia in September next year after finishing her work in the UK.

ntv7.com.my

Siti Aishah has intention to return to Malaysia in nine months' time, the estimated duration for the British authorities to conduct investigations into the accusations against her "captors".

nst.com.my

"She told me, 'I have got friends here, I work here. I do important work here', but she could not reveal what it was she did," said Kamar Mahtum, Siti Aishah's sister.

nst.com.my

“She has many activities there, she is doing welfare work to help people as a volunteer but I persuaded her to return,” she said after arriving with political activist Hishamuddin Rais at 7.40am.

abnxcess.com

“She says she misses everybody at home and also wrote ‘see you in the immediate future’. I take that as a positive action,” said Kamarmahtum.

astroawani.com

A Malaysian woman said to have been enslaved for nearly 30 years, Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab, has refused to return to Malaysia and denied she was a slave in London, says activist Hishamuddin Rais.

themalaysianinsider.com

"Siti Aishah has said she was not anyone’s slave. That is her ideological belief," says HIshamuddin Rais.

According to Hishamuddin, Siti Aishah is not keen to return to Malaysia on a permanent basis.

The 30-year wait to meet her sister came to an end for former teacher Kamar Mahtum when she managed to meet her Siti Aishah Wahab in an undisclosed location in London.

Zakaria also said Kamarmahtum had asked her sister to write letters to family members that she still remembers back in Malaysia.

Siti Aishah was also given assurance that the Malaysian High Commission will assist her accordingly in any matter needed.

malaysia-chronicle.com

"Kamar Mahtum gave Aishah a prayer rug. Aishah was asked to write to her family in Malaysia," he was reported as saying, and did not give any more details.

msn.com

The elder sister of rescued Malaysian slavery victim Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab handed over a letter to her through Malaysian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Datuk Seri Zakaria Sulong.

nst.com.my

"She might have changed but I have a feeling it is her. I will still think of her as my sister if it is really her," the former teacher said. Siti Aishah, she pointed out, has paid for all her mistakes.

themalaysianinsider.com

Siti Aishah Abd Wahab, the 69-year-old Malaysian woman caught in the slavery controversy in London, has been warded for a stroke.

Her niece Siti Zawiyah Othman, 55, said a relative who was also in London had notified the family here that Siti Aishah was now recuperating in a hospital.

“We have also been told that my aunt is in a stable condition,” Siti Zawiyah was quoted as saying at her Kuala Klawang home in the Negri Sembilan district.

themalaymailonline.com

Khalid told a press conference on Wednesday that his UK counterparts have confirmed the woman's identity.

malaysiandigest.com

The Malaysian victim involved in the Lambeth slavery case is Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab. Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar confirmed her identity and revealed that the woman was a student activist and leftist in the 1970s.

Khalid said Siti Aishah had continued to be monitored by Malaysian police despite having fled to London. He did not say when, or if, this surveillance ceased.

themalaymailonline.com

“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.

scmp.com

Retired teacher Kamar Mahtum claims to be the sister of the 69-year-old victim, whom Kamar said disappeared from the family’s lives after joining a Maoist sect.

rakyatnews.my

The sister of a Malaysian woman who was allegedly held captive by the leaders of a 1970s Communist “collective” for 30 years in London, left for England on Tuesday night to identify the victim.

astroawani.com

Kamar said her disappearance had caused extreme heartache for her family. She said their mother’s dying wish had been to know what had happened to her daughter, who never returned.

themalaysianinsider.com

Kamar Mahtum declined to be interviewed and appeared baffled at the crowd of reporters waiting for her at the airport. Hishamuddin, meanwhile, said Kamar was his former teacher and a close family friend.

nst.com.my

"I will not return to Malaysia until I meet her," Kamar told The Malaysian Insider when met at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport last night.

themalaysianinsider.com

The UK’s Scotland Yard refused today to divulge the identity of the 69-year-old Malaysian woman who was recently rescued from slavery in London, saying she was still “traumatised” by her 30-year captivity.

The Malaysian High Commission in London has appealed to British authorities to let them speak to a woman, said to be a Malaysian, who was rescued after being held as a domestic slave with two others for 30 years.

High Commissioner Datuk Seri Zakaria Sulong said his officials had yet to be allowed to meet the 69-year-old woman. "We need to talk to this woman to establish her nationality immediately. At the moment, the police are not allowing us to meet her."

allvoices.com

“We are not discussing the identity of the victims...We will not be going into detail around our contact with other agencies in the case,” Scotland Yard's spokesman added, when asked if the Metropolitan Police will allow Putrajaya access to the Malaysian victim to assist her.

themalaymailonline.com

A 69-year-old Malaysian woman held as a slave in a London "collective" for some 30 years could be Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab, who went missing years ago, says former student activist Hishamuddin Rais.

themalaysianinsider.com

Hishamuddin, who went into self-exile in London in the 1970s, said Siti Aishah was active with Malaysian students in a leftist group that called itself "New Malayan Youth" in the British capital city at that time.

themalaysianinsider.com

"Her brother sought me in 1991 to get assistance to find Aishah, who was said to be missing, as both of us come from the same district," Hishamuddin told The Malaysian Insider early today, 26 November 2013.

themalaysianinsider.com

He said that Siti Aishah followed Marxist-Leninist teachings and had studied the thoughts of Communist China leader, the late Mao Zedong.

themalaysianinsider.com

British police yesterday rescued three women from a house in London where they are believed to have been held as slaves for at least 30 years.

Scotland Yard police headquarters said the victims were a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish woman and a 30-year-old Briton.

themalaysianinsider.com

Police said the three women were unrelated to each other, but it was unclear if the youngest victim is related to their captors.

Police said on Thursday the youngest woman, a 30-year-old British citizen, had had "no contact with the outside world" and was probably born in captivity, possibly within the house in Lambeth.

theguardian.com

Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland, from the Metropolitan Police’s Human Trafficking Unit, said: ‘This is an extraordinary case.
‘We don’t know whether the 30-year-old was born in the house, but she has spent her whole life, we believe, in this servitude or forced labour.

The extraordinary story of how the women were rescued from three decades of fear and enslavement within an "ordinary house in an ordinary street" in south London emerged on Thursday after the Metropolitan police's human trafficking unit arrested an unnamed man and woman, both 67, at the same property in Lambeth, at 7.30am.

theguardian.com

The pair, who are not British citizens, were bailed early on Friday morning until a date in January. They were arrested on suspicion of being involved in forced labour and domestic servitude, contrary to Section 71 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

theguardian.com

The three women were freed on October 25 but the couple were only arrested yesterday. Police refused to reveal the exact location of the house where the trio were kept.

news.com.au

"There was a delay in the arrest. This was down to the fact that we had to work very carefully with these people who were highly traumatised and it was very difficult to establish the facts.

"The last thing we wanted to do was increase that trauma."

bbc.co.uk

The couple – described as the ‘heads of the family’ – were being questioned at a south London police station last night.
Both are understood to be non-British, but police would not comment on suggestions they were Irish.

Freedom Charity said the women were terrified of the couple. The Irish woman said they had all been held against their will for three decades and were too frightened to leave.

news.com.au

"They had limited freedom, there was some controlled freedom but their lives were allegedly one of domestic servants or forced labour. They were living in a normal community, but that's not unusual for cases of servitude, trafficking or forced labour."

theguardian.com

The victims are so traumatised that police have been unable to interview them fully, and are still unsure of key details of the abuse.

Hyland said the three women were highly traumatised and were being kept in a place of safety. He said it had taken time following their rescue for them to be able to talk to the police.

"There's a lot of difficulties with the victims," he said. "These are deeply traumatised people and we are getting professional help to establish the events that have happened to them.

theguardian.com

It began when the Irish woman made an audacious telephone call for help last month. She acted after seeing a television documentary and watching the founder of an organisation called the Freedom Charity being interviewed. The woman told the helpline she had been held against her will in a house in London for more than 30 years. She also said there were two others with her.

theguardian.com

Freedom Charity founder Aneeta Prem told the British media that it was the 57-year-old Irish woman who phoned the organisation.

“I think all of them saw me on the news and made a decision because of the name of the charity and because they had seen me on TV – that gave them the courage to make that phone call,” said Prem, referring to the SOS by the three women to her.

"A television documentary on forced marriages relating to the work of Freedom Charity was the catalyst that prompted one of the victims to call for help and led to their rescue."
Freedom Charity, which supports victims of forced marriages or honour-based violence, contacted police after the 57-year-old telephoned them.

news.com.au

The charity contacted the police. "They were very brave to carry on with that. It was very difficult for them to get to the telephone. They gave us set times when they were able to speak to us."

theguardian.com

Ms Prem said of the initial contact with the Irish woman: "She said she had been held against her will.

"She was able to use a phone but that was done in a very secret way, the people in the house didn't know she had it.

bbc.co.uk

"It was a process of just over a week where there was lots of phone calls and they gained the trust of the charity, and by doing that they felt confident to reveal enough information, and obviously the police were involved, and they managed to walk out of the house when nobody was around.

bbc.co.uk

Prem said her workers treated "every call as a last chance" and immediately sought to help the women. "We gained their trust over a period of telephone calls when they could telephone. That had to be done in secret," she said.

theguardian.com

Tense negotiations took place over a week during secret telephone calls which that the women were able to make from the house, before – in a carefully choreographed rescue – the three women were able to walk out of the property on 25 October, where officers were waiting.

theguardian.com

Two of the women – the 30-year-old and 57-year-old – walked out of the house and met the charity workers and the police as planned. They then identified the location where they had been held and the police moved in to rescue the eldest Malaysian woman from the property on the same day.

theguardian.com

"It was a very emotional time, when we got the message they were outside the front door the whole call centre erupted in cheers and there were tears, and everyone was incredibly emotional to know we had helped to rescue three ladies who had been held in such horrific conditions."

bbc.co.uk

It is believed another factor in their decision to break free was realising the elderly couple had become more frail, and the women had turned into their carers.

They were taken into specialist care, and over days and weeks they were coaxed into talking about what had happened to them. Detective Inspector Kevin Hyland, who leads the Met's human trafficking unit, said what had been uncovered in the home was like nothing the police had ever experienced before.

theguardian.com

Det Insp Kevin Hyland, from the Metropolitan Police's Human Trafficking Unit, said: "We have seen some cases when people have been held for 10 years, but we have never seen anything of this magnitude before."

bbc.co.uk

She described the victims’ treatment as “barbaric”. She also claimed to the Daily Mail newspaper that the women suffered physical and mental abuse. “They felt they were in massive danger. They did have rooms that they could use but they were really restricted about what they could do and could never leave the front door.

A charity said last night that the victims had suffered physical and mental harm, but not sexual abuse. The charity’s founder, Aneeta Prem, said: ‘They were absolutely terrified by the people they were held by. She said the women did have their own rooms in the house, but rarely went out and if they did, were always escorted.

“I don’t believe the neighbours knew anything about it at all.

“I think you would describe it as just an ordinary house in an ordinary street that wouldn’t raise any concerns with any neighbours or anyone else.

nst.com.my

As the couple were arrested yesterday a source close to the inquiry said there were fears that there may be other victims. ‘There are fears this is part of a wider abduction ring. There is an ongoing search of possible linked addresses, and for any bodies that might be concealed.’

"They have absolutely nothing now and as a charity we're trying to support them.

bbc.co.uk

She said the women had been taken together to a place of safety, were happy and were doing well considering their ordeal.

The women will be afforded help and support.

"They're going to hopefully have happy, fulfilled lives once they get over this horrendous trauma, if they ever will get over the trauma that they've been in," said Prem.

themalaysianinsider.com