BLAME GAME WON’T BRING JAKATIA BACK TO LIFE

ZAMBOANGA CITY—“We can blame everyone but this will never bring back the life of my sister,” Air Force Col. Angaris Pawa said a day after his sister, Jakatia, was executed in Kuwait for murder.

“The whole family is trying to accept this,” said Angaris, the only family member that Jakatia spoke to shortly before her death.

Personally, Angaris said, he still could not imagine how his sister sounded so brave in the face of death.

“Imagine, a person who was about to be hanged called up and told us be strong because she was to be executed,” he said.

But Angaris said if there was one negative thing he can talk about, it would be that none of the embassy officials in Kuwait contacted them prior to the execution of his sister.

Niya Hadiza Alama, 18, Jakatia’s daughter and eldest child, said she thought her mother was joking when she told Angaris of her imminent execution.

“I thought she was just joking because when we visited her last year, we were already drawing up plans on things to do for her liberty,” she said.

Angaris earlier said they had a firm belief that Jakatia was to be released this year after a human rights lawyer told them so. But it came out the family of the 22-year-old Kuwaiti woman that Jakatia allegedly murdered in 2007 wanted her to just die. They said no to blood money.

Aminkadra, 13, Jakatia’s boy, said he was the last to be told of his mother’s fate.