KOTA KINABALU: Datin Jikilin Binion had almost given up on finding out what exactly happened to the plane that crashed in Sembulan near here, killing her husband.
After 46 years of waiting and hoping, the 88-year-old widow of the late state assistant minister Datuk Darius Binion, who perished in the “Double Six” crash, will finally know the answer.
This came after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim announced on Wednesday (April 5) that the report would be declassified and made public next week.
"I was in the kitchen doing my chores when I heard this on the radio. I immediately stopped what I was doing and sat down to listen clearer," said Jikilin who never remarried.
Her tears just started flowing as she let the information sink in, with memories of that fateful day came flooding back.
"I felt like the first time when I got the bad news back then but this time, it is for something I have been praying and hoping for so long and there was a time I even lost hope of ever finding out.
"I cannot wait to get my hands on the report and read its contents. I want to know what actually happened, not just hearsay or from the past newspaper reports that are incomplete," she said.
She said after the crash on June 6, 1976, she had waited for the day when someone could give her and her family the answer as to what exactly happened, but her wait turned from months to years, to decades.
Jikilin hopes justice would be served for the families of the crash which killed 11 people including the then chief minister Tun Fuad Stephens.
"We have been suffering for too long without any closure or answer to this incident," she said.
Others who perished in the crash included state ministers Datuk Salleh Sulong, Datuk Peter Mojuntin, Chong Thien Vun, Sabah Finance Ministry permanent secretary Datuk Wahid Peter Andau, Isak Atan (private secretary to Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, who was then finance minister), Kpl Said Mohammad (bodyguard to Fuad), pilot Capt Gandhi Nathan and Fuad’s eldest son Johari Stephens.
They were on a flight from Labuan when the aircraft crashed in Sembulan while approaching the Kota Kinabalu International Airport.
