Fourth arrest made over killing of Kim Jong Nam

Malaysians try to untangle bizarre death of N. Korean leader’s exiled half-brother

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA— At a morgue in Malaysia’s capital, the tightly guarded corpse of a middleaged man has become the focus of a dizzying case of international intrigue involving five countries, combative North Korean diplomats and an apparently duped assassin.

Investigators are still trying to piece together details of what appeared to be the brazen assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s dictatorial ruler and an exiled member of the country’s elite. Malaysian police said Saturday that they had arrested a fourth suspect, a 46-year-old North Korean man.

Kim, who had been estranged from his younger half-sibling for years, was attacked at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on Monday. A rotund man in his mid-40s, he told medical workers at the airport that he had been sprayed in the face with a chemical. He grew dizzy, suffered a seizure and was dead within hours, Malaysian officials said.

Without citing much in the way of evidence, observers including South Korea pointed to the obvious culprit in Monday’s attack: Kim’s halfbrother, Kim Jong Un, who has executed or purged a slew of high-level officials since taking power in 2011.

As rumours swirled, Malaysia arrested four people over the course of the week — including an Indonesian woman who told investigators she was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank.

Citing information received from Malaysian authorities, Indonesian police Chief Tito Karnavian said Siti Aisyah, 25, was paid to be involved in Just for Laughs- style pranks, a reference to a popular hidden-camera show. He said she and another woman performed stunts that involved persuading men to close their eyes and then spraying them with water.

“Such an action was done three or four times and they were given a few dollars for it and, with the last target, Kim Jong Nam, allegedly there were dangerous materials in the sprayer,” Karnavian said. “She was not aware that it was an assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents.”

North Korean officials made no public comments for several days, but they privately demanded custody of the body and strongly objected to an autopsy. The Malaysians went ahead with it anyway, saying they were simply following procedure.

The results of the autopsy have not been released publicly, but a Malaysian official with knowledge of the investigation said the results were inconclusive and that there was a second autopsy conducted on Friday night. He asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

But senior Malaysian police official Abdul Samah Mat denied the second autopsy had taken place.

Less than a week after Kim’s death, the case had already reached well beyond Malaysia to North Korea, South Korea and Indonesia, along with Macau, where Kim Jong Nam lived with his family, and Vietnam, which was looking into whether another of the suspects was a citizen.

Malaysia is seeking DNA samples from Kim Jong Nam’s immediate family.

He is believed to have two sons and a daughter with two women living in Beijing and Macau. Meanwhile, China’s Commerce Ministry announced Saturday it will suspend all imports of coal from North Korea until the end of the year, in a surprise move that would cut off a major financial lifeline for Pyongyang and significantly enhance the effectiveness of United Nations sanctions. With files from the Washington Post