Sister of rescued slave: I won't leave until I see her

She is relieved that her long-lost sister might have been found but she will not be happy until she sees her.

Madam Kamar Mahtum Abdul Wahab, 69, left for London, UK, on Tuesday night to see her sister Siti Aishah Abdul Wahab.

Ms Siti Aishah was one of the three women rescued from 30 years of alleged slavery there. The Malaysian woman, along with a 30-year-old British woman and a 57-year-old Irish woman, was rescued on Oct 25 from a home in London's Lambeth district.

It is believed that the women were enslaved by a Maoist cult.

Madam Kamar has vowed not to return without seeing her sister, liberal news portal Malaysian Insider reported.

HOPE REKINDLED

Madam Kamar, whose hopes of finding her long-lost sister were rekindled by the reports, admitted that she was worried that her sister might not want to meet her.

Said the retired teacher: "If she is my sister, I am happy. But would she be happy to see me? 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."

She revealed that her sister's disappearance had left the family heartbroken. Their mother's dying wish had been to know what had happened to her daughter.

"I have felt so choked without her for years and years. She was so talented, she was the apple of my mother's eye. My mother asked for her on her deathbed," the UK's Daily Telegraph reported Madam Kamar as saying.

Ms Siti Aishah, who would be about 69 now, had left to study in Britain in 1968 but her family lost track of her soon after that, relatives told AFP.

"I will hug her and cry if she comes back home," her eldest sister Hasnah Abdul Wahab, 88, said.

"We have been looking for her for a long, long time," she told AFP in the family's hometown of Jelebu in Negeri Sembilan, as she held a photo of Ms Siti Aishah as a young woman.

Prominent Malaysian activist Hishamuddin Rais said that Ms Siti Aishah had joined other Malaysian students in a leftist group in Britain called the New Malayan Youth in the 1970s.

The Malaysian government has not yet commented on the woman's identity.

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