KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 27 — The daughter of the Malaysian couple in Sweden on trial for allegedly hitting their children feels estranged from her parents. A court in Stockholm heard Aishah Azizul Raheem say she looked to her aunts as her “real mum”. “I’m close to my mum’s sisters, I feel they’re like my real mum,” the court heard Aishah say in a pre-recorded interview shown in the Solna district court on Tuesday. “I don’t feel close with my actual mum.”
The Star reported today that upon hearing this, her mother Shalwati Nurshal pulled back in her seat, while her father Azizul Raheem Awalluddin looked down and rubbed his temples with his thumbs.
Shalwati and Azizul, a Tourism Malaysia official, were detained on December 18 after their eldest son, Ammar, told staff at his school that he had been beaten.
Asked in the pre-recorded interview if she liked her father, Aishah, 14, said she was not close to him either, and preferred to stay by herself in her room.
Aishah recalled a fight with her mum over clothes an aunt bought for Aishah.
“One time my aunt bought me jeans, and mum said it was supposed to be under RM50,” she said. “But I got two pairs of jeans for about RM100 something instead, so mum scolded me, saying it was too expensive.”
Asked how it made her feel, Aishah said “angry and sad”, absent-mindedly tearing the tissue paper placed on the interview table, according to The Star.
In an earlier interview, Aishah said all her siblings wanted to live with their aunt in Malaysia, after spending some time in a Swedish foster home.
Aishah and her siblings — Ammar, 12, Adam, 11 and Arif, 7 — were placed in the custody of their aunt Shalena Hisham Makhzan and her husband Nik Farid Nik Abdullah, when they arrived back in Malaysia on February 1.
They have since been attending school and living in Kota Baru, Kelantan.
On February 10, Shalwati and Azizul were charged with multiple counts of gross violation of a child’s integrity, by hitting and abusing their children.
The alleged offences took place in the family’s home in Spånga, a Stockholm suburb, between September 15, 2010, and December 17, 2013.
The trial continues tomorrow.
