Drug trafficker was given second chance but she blew it.
Two decades after she escaped Aminah Jaafar is back where she began-in a jail cell at Changi Women’s prison.
But now, the drug trafficker who drew international attention when she became the first women here to be sentenced to death for druge offences behind her, plus two failed marriage , two children and a new 5.5 year jail sentence to serve.
She is 42 now, a far cry from the slim and pretty teenager who w...as caught trafficking heroin with her then-lover in 1978.
But time, experience and even a second shot at life have failed to steer her away from the drug scene.Despite spending 13 years and eight months behind bars after her death sentence was commuted to a life term, Siti got back into narcotics after her release.
Central Narcotics Bureau records confirm that she was detained at a drug-rehabilitation centre at least three times since her release from jail 10 years ago.
Her appearance in court last week on a fresh drug-use charge even moved District Judge Seng Kwang Boon to remark:” You were sentenced to death in 1978.how come you are still around?”
It is a good question.
Sources close to Siti say she got off to a bad start in life;that there was not enough support out there for her when she left prison;that she kept gravitating towards people who were involved in drugs;that she did not make the most of whatever help was available.
In short,they say,she never really reformed.
Born into a family of 11 children, Siti dropped out of school in secondary 1. she expermented with drugs while working as a nightclub waitress and became addicted to heroin.
Married at 17, her husband was jailed for armed robbery in 1976,leaving her with a two-year-old son by the time she met her lover Anwar Ali Khan.
She was with Anwar when they were caught trafficking in 43.5 g of heroin on May 6,1977.
She was just four months past her 18th birthday Anwar was 25.
She was granted clemency by then-President Devan Nair. Anwar was hanged.
When she was released on Dec. 28, 1991, her family went to the jail to collect her and she went to collect her and she went to live with a brother in Jurong.
Uncomfortable about living with his family, she moved in with a friend in a rented flat in Chai Chee for a while, and then to another flat in Bukit Panjang.
She ended up marrying a recovering herion addict whom she apparently met at a reporting station for urine tests.
The match proved disastrous as she started gravitating towards people with drug records.
In september 1994,less than three years after her prison release. she landed in a drug-rehabilitation centre.
Although she served the six months there segregated from other adicts, the stint failed to keep her drug-free during the two-year supervision period following her release.
She was back at the centre in September 1996.
By this time she was already demonstrating the characteristics of a bardened offender. A former inmate who served time there during the same period said that Siti was labelled a “Romeo”, meaning a macho-women who was regarded as an abang.
Abang means older brother in Malay.
Following this 18-month term,she attended a few group-counselling sessions in the Women Against Drug Abuse programme conducted by the Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association.But she dropped out before she was assigned a personal counsellor.
Five months later, she was back in the drug center.but she was pregnant with her second child at the time and this lead to her early release in December 1998.
When dishcharged, she declined follow-up counselling assistance but appeared determined to stay clean.
She apparently managed to do so far more than 2.5 years, until her arrest last month on Oct. 6 for her lastest offence.
One prison sourse said that the writing was on the wall before Siti walked free in 1991. Decribed as a smart, soft-spoken woman who was also a devout Muslim, Siti was a very well-behaved inmate initially.
“In prison she became so religious thst she was like a preacher,and was diligent in oberserving prayer times,” said a former inmate who served time at the same prison.” Being grateful for this second chance moved her in what she did.” but as her discharge date approached,she changed. She mixed with hard-core addicts and chalked up some minor transgressions,like receiving unauthorised items from other inmates.
Said a source: ”Like the Malay proverb saperti katak di-bawah tempurong, she was now coming out to be exposed to a new world and I feared that from acting like an angel while inside, she would become a devil outside.”
The proverb means “like a frog under a coconut shell.”
Commenting on Siti’s case , Dr Brian Yeo, 40, a consultant psychiatrist at the mount Elizabeth Medical Centrewith extensive experence in the treatment of drug addicts , said that serious offenderneeded support to help them re-adjust to the real world.
“The prison environment is custodial and different from the outside environment. While imprisonment is punitive, there needs to be a period of adjustment to help them re-adapt to society.
He said a stint at a halfway house was useful, as was a course of “opiate blockers”.
“Opiate-blocker tablets prevent drugs like herion, codeline and methadone from entering the baby.these tablets buy time as the ex-addict adjusts to society,” he said.
Counselling is necessary, as is a supportive family environment, to reinforce these sessions.at the time of Siti’s release , opiate-antagonist programmes were not available.the serious nature of her offence would have made her ineligible for halfway houses, and her relationship with her family was strained.
The lawyer who spearheaded Siti’s 1982 clemency appeal. Mr. Loh Lin Kok,said he was disappointed to hear that she was back in jail.
“When she was sentenced then, she had many years ahead and I didn’t think she would recidivate as she would be in her 30s by the time she got out.”
“I think she was bloody lucky to have kept her neck intact at that time . if I were to see her now,I would ask how this could have happened.”
Siti’s family declined to be interviewed about her return to jail when the Straits Times visited their Commonweath Drive flat last week.”
Sources say her relationship with her mother is strained, and her elder son Taufek Yahya,now 25, was commited to a drug-treatment centre in 1998.
It is not known who now cares for her second child, but Siti seperated from her second husband a few years ago.
One long-time observer of the case who decline to be named was pessimistic about Siti’s chances of reforming.
“Being in prison for such a long time, she moved around in the wrong circles and she had no role models. her role models inside were also criminals.”
“It’s a pity. She was given a second chance and she blew it.”
“I do not know where she can go from here because half her life has been spent in jail. She needs to be very strong!”