Second woman held over N Korea killing

MALAYSIAN police probing the killing of the half-brother of North Korea’s leader yesterday, arrested a second woman over the spy novel-style assassination Seoul said was carried out by Pyongyang agents.

A woman with an Indonesian passport was taken into custody overnight and was being quizzed along with a 28-year-old Vietnamese woman detained on Wednesday.

The two women were arrested separately by detectives trying to get to the bottom of the murder of Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged playboy brother of Kim Jong-Un.

South Korean intelligence chiefs say he was poisoned by North Korean agents as he walked through Kuala Lumpur International Airport on his way to board a flight for Macau.

The portly 45-year-old had some kind of liquid sprayed in his face after being set upon by two women, Malaysian police have said.

He was rushed to hospital suffering from a seizure, but was dead before he got there.

Several more arrests were expected throughout the day, Deputy Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Noor Rashid Ibrahim said.

The first suspect, named as Doan Thi Huong, had been expected to appear in court yesterday morning, but Selangor state police chief Abdul Samah Mat said officers had obtained a seven-day remand order for her and for Indonesian passport holder Siti Aishah, aged 25.

Kim’s body was yesterday being held at Kuala Lumpur Hospital following an autopsy, the results of which have not yet been released.

If confirmed, the assassination, which analysts said could have been ordered over reports Kim was readying to defect, would be the highest-profile death under the watch of the North’s young leader Kim Jong-Un.

Jong-Nam was the eldest son of Kim Jong-il, but on his father’s death in 2011 the succession went to Jong-Un, who was born to the former leader’s third wife.

He has since lived in exile, with much of his time spent in the gambling enclave of Macau.

Known as an advocate of reform in the North and believed to have ties with Beijing’s elite, Jong-Nam once told Japanese reporters that he opposed his country’s dynastic system. — AFP