‘Nerve agent killed Kim brother’

Malaysian police say banned chemical weapon found on his eyes, face; North Korea rejects probe

KUALA LUMPUR: The banned chemical weapon VX nerve agent was used to kill Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean ruler’s outcast half brother who was poisoned last week at the airport in Kuala Lumpur, police said on Friday. The announcement raised serious questions about public safety in a building that was never decontaminated.

The substance, deadly even in minute amounts, was detected on Kim’s eyes and face, Malaysia’s inspector general of police said in a written statement, citing a preliminary analysis from the country’s chemistry department.

“Our preliminary finding of the chemical that caused the death of Kim Chol was VX nerve,” said inspector general of police Khalid Abu Bakar. Kim Chol is the name on the passport found on the victim, but a Malaysian official previously confirmed he is North Korea leader Kim Jong Un’s older half brother.

Khalid said police were still investigating how the lethal agent entered Malaysia.

The death of Kim Jong Nam, whose daylight assassination in a crowded airport terminal seems straight out of a spy novel, has unleashed a diplomatic crisis that escalates by the day.

With each new twist in the case, international speculation has grown that Pyongyang dispatched a hit squad to Malaysia to kill the exiled older sibling of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea has denounced Malaysia’s investigation as full of “holes and contradictions” and accused the authorities here of being in cahoots with Pyongyang’s enemies.

According to Malaysian investigators, two women - one of them Indonesian, the other Vietnamese - coated their hands with chemicals and wiped them on Kim’s face on February 13 as he waited for a flight home to Macau, where he lived with his family.

He sought help from airport staff but he fell into convulsions and died on the way to the hospital within two hours of the attack, police said.

The case has perplexed toxicologists, who question how the two women could have walked away unscathed after handling a powerful poison, even if - as Malaysian police say - the women were instructed to wash their hands right after the attack.

Malaysian police previously said the airport was not decontaminated and no one else besides Kim Jong Nam had been sickened.

But if VX was indeed used as Malaysian officials assert, it could have contaminated not only the airport but anyplace else Kim had been, including medical facilities and the ambulance he was transported in.

The nerve agent, which has the consistency of motor oil, can take days or even weeks to evaporate.

VX is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which North Korea never signed.

The country is believed by outside experts to have the capacity to produce up to 4,500 metric tons of chemical weapons during a typical year.