Zahid confirms dead North Korean Kim Jong-nam

PUTRAJAYA: Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi yesterday officially confirmed that the North Korean man who died at KL International Airport 2 on Monday was Kim Jong-nam, the estranged elder half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jongun.

Zahid, who is the Deputy Prime Minister, said Jong-nam was the same person who carried the passport bearing the name Kim Chol.

The identity was verified based on the passport which, he said, was authentic.

He said Jong-nam carried two different identities in what could have been undercover pass ports, and the documents were authentic.

“His identity was confirmed from the passport that we compared with the document issued by the Embassy of North Korea and by the identity issued by the embassy,” he said at a press conference after chairing a round-table dialogue with industry leaders on foreign workers here.

Asked whether the police had identified the North Korean by his DNA, Ahmad Zahid said the hospital authorities and police would issue the official statement on that as it was an operational matter.

He said the government would facilitate any request by North Korea to claim the body, in accordance with standard operating procedure.

The body would be released to the next-of-kin or the embassy after all the police and medical procedures had been completed, he said.

“To date, (there has been) no official request (from the next- ofkin) but they (the family) probably channelled their request to the North Korean embassy,” he said.