Death sparks diplomatic row
‘ The Malaysian side is trying to conceal something.’ NORTH KOREAN AMBASSADOR KANG CHOL
KUALA LUMPUR North Korea says it will reject the results of an autopsy on its leader’s estranged half-brother, the victim of an apparent assassination this week at an airport in Malaysia. Pyongyang’s ambassador said Malaysian officials may be ‘‘trying to conceal something’’ and ‘‘colluding with hostile forces’’.
Indonesia’s police chief, meanwhile, said an Indonesian woman arrested for suspected involvement in the death of Kim Jongnam was duped into thinking she was part of a comedy show prank.
North Korean Ambassador Kang Chol said Malaysia conducted the autopsy on Kim Jong-nam ‘‘unilaterally and excluding our attendance’’.
Kim, who was 45 or 46 and had lived in exile for years, suddenly fell ill at the Kuala Lumpur airport on Tuesday as he waited for a flight home to Macau. Dizzy and in pain, he told medical workers at the airport he had been sprayed with a chemical. He died while being taken to a hospital.
‘‘We will categorically reject the result of the post-mortem,’’ Kang said, adding that the move disregarded ‘‘elementary international laws and consular laws.’’
He said the fact that Malaysia had yet to hand over the body ‘‘strongly suggests that the Malaysian side is trying to conceal something which needs more time and deceive us, and that they are colluding with the hostile forces towards us who are desperate to harm us’’.
North Korea would ‘‘respond strongly to the moves of the hostile forces toward us’’, and would sue Malaysia in an international court, he said.
South Korea has accused its enemies in North Korea of dispatching a hit squad to kill Kim at the airport, saying two female assassins poisoned him and then fled in a taxi.
North Korean diplomats in Malaysia objected to an autopsy and had requested custody of Kim’s body, arguing that he had a North Korean passport.
Malaysia said yesterday it wanted DNA samples from Kim’s family as part of the post-mortem procedure, and that officials were not yet willing to hand the body over to the North Koreans.
Malaysian police yesterday arrested a fourth person, a North Korean national, over the killing. Two women and a man were arrested earlier.
Indonesian police chief Tito Karnavian, citing information from Malaysian authorities, said one of the arrested women, Siti Aisyah, 25, was paid to be involved in a prank.
He said she and another woman performed stunts which involved convincing 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.’’ AP