Pair face noose over Kim killing
MALAYSIA: Two young women and a suspected North Korean spy could face the gallows for killing Kim Jong-nam as police prepare to charge them with murder.
More than two weeks after the bizarre assassination of the halfbrother of North Korea’s dictator, police are running out of time to question without charge the two women who carried out the attack, Doan Thi Huong, 28, from Vietnam and Siti Aishah, 25, from Indonesia.
Both women insist that they did not know they were involved in an assassination plot, and thought that they were rubbing a harmless liquid into the face of Kim, in a prank being filmed for a television programme.
When their period on remand ends today, they are likely to be charged with murder, which carries a mandatory death penalty in Malaysia.
Ri Jong-chol, 47, the only one of eight North Koreans suspects to have been apprehended, must be charged or released on Friday.
The details of his alleged involvement in the case have not been revealed, but he is also likely to face murder charges, according to The Sun Daily newspaper.
Meanwhile, reports emerged yesterday that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, ordered five officials to be executed with antiaircraft guns soon after the death of his half-brother.
The executions do not appear to have been directly related to the killing of Kim Jong-nam, but the officials did work for the organisation that South Korea blames for his death, North Korea’s ministry of state security.
In a private briefing to South Korean MPS, the head of the country’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) called the assassination an act of ‘‘state-orchestrated terrorism’’.
‘‘It was a case of terrorism directly led by the state security and foreign ministries, a state-led terrorism,’’ Lee Cheol-woo, chairman of the parliamentary intelligence committee, told reporters after the briefing.
Kim Byung-kee, an opposition MP, said intelligence chiefs had concluded that the assassination had been ordered at the highest level: ‘‘In light of the composition of personnel, the NIS judged that it was systematically conducted terrorism by Kim Jong-un.’’
Since Kim Jong-nam was poisoned with VX nerve agent in Kuala Lumpur airport, Malaysian police have named eight North Koreans whom they suspect of plotting the crime. One has been arrested. According to the NIS, two of the wanted men are diplomats, and four are from the ministry of state security, including Hyon Kwangsong.The Times