Jakarta - Family and former neighbours of an Indonesian woman suspected of involvement in the audacious killing of the North Korean leader’s half brother in Malaysia are stunned by the arrest of the young mother who they say was a polite and quiet “nice girl”.
Siti Aisyah, 25, is one of three people arrested so far by Malaysian police for possible involvement in the apparent assassination of Kim Jong-nam.
Between 2008 and 2011 she and her then-husband lived in a modest dwelling with flaking red paint in a narrow alley of the densely-populated Tambora neighbourhood in western Jakarta.
Her former father-in-law Tjia Liang Kiong, who lives in a nearby middle-class neighbourhood and last saw Aisyah on January 28, described her as a “very kind, polite and respectful person”.
The three suspects - Aisyah, a woman carrying a Vietnamese passport and a man said to be Aisyah’s Malaysian boyfriend - were arrested separately on Wednesday and Thursday.
The women were identified using surveillance videos from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where Kim Jong-nam suddenly fell ill on Monday morning.
News of Aisyah’s arrest has captivated Indonesia’s scandal- and mystery-loving media, with some outlets characterising her as a spy.
“Oh my God, how can I believe it,” said Aminah, a housewife who is one of Aisyah’s former Tambora neighbours.
Siti Aisyah, 25, an Indonesian woman suspected to be involved in the killing of the North Korean leader’s half brother at Kuala Lumpur Airport. Picture: AP
Aisyah’s mother, Benah, said by telephone that the family comes from a humble village background and is unable to help her.
“Since we heard that from the television, I could not sleep and eat. Same as her father, he just prays and reads the Holy Qur’an.
“He even does not want to speak,” said Benah.
“As villagers, we could only pray.”
Aisyah, according to Kiong, moved to Malaysia with his son in 2011 to seek a better life after their garment business collapsed.
The couple left their nearly two-year-old son in Jakarta, here he has been raised by Kiong and his wife since then.
A year after leaving Indonesia, Aisyah returned to Jakarta and told Kiong she wanted a divorce from his son because he’d changed and the marriage had become unhappy. Kiong said his son gave a
different account: Aisyah was having an affair with a
Malaysian man.
The divorce was finalised in 2012 and Aisyah told Kiong she was living with her parents in Serang in Banten province that neighbours Jakarta, and working in a shoe store.
A few months later she was on the move again, telling Kiong she was working in a clothing shop on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore and Malaysia.
At their last meeting late last month, when Aisyah visited her son, Kiong thought she looked very slim, and when his wife asked if she was sick, Aisyah said she’d had a respiratory illness.
Indonesian immigration said on Thursday that Aisyah entered Malaysia on February 2 by ferry from Batam.
Rahmat Yusri, head of the neighbourhood where Aisyah lived, did not believe she could commit murder.
“I was so surprised when I heard that because I knew her well. I did not believe it because she is an innocent, a quiet woman who came from a village.”