Female ‘assassin’ held in Malaysia

AIRPORT: NORTH KOREA LEADER’S HALF-BROTHER KILLED

Seoul points at poison-wielding women agents acting on Pyongyang’s orders.

Malaysian police probing the killing of the half-brother of North Korea’s leader arrested a woman yesterday as they tried to unravel a Cold War-style assassination the South said was carried out by Pyongyang’s agents.

As Seoul pointed the finger at poison-wielding female spies from North of their shared border, police in Kuala Lumpur said they were holding a woman with a Vietnamese passport. Her arrest came 24 hours after news broke of the death of Kim Jong-Nam, the elder sibling of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, with reports saying female assassins sprayed toxins in his face at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said 28-year-old Doan Thi Huong was arrested at the airport yesterday – two days after the killing. She was “positively identified from the CCTV footage at the airport”.

Pathologists were examining the body for clues as to how Jong-Nam died, in a killing that has echoes of Soviet-era spycraft. If confirmed, the assassination, which analysts said could have been ordered over reports he was readying to defect, would be the highest-profile death on Kim Jong-Un’s watch since the 2013 execution of his uncle, Jang SongThaek. South Korea’s spy chief, Lee Byung-Ho, said the two women struck on Monday as Kim was readying to board a flight to Macau where he lives in exile. Malaysian police said Kim, 45, was in the departure hall when he was attacked. “He told the receptionist... someone had grabbed his face from behind and splashed some liquid on him,” Selangor state’s criminal investigation chief Fadzil Ahmat was reported as saying in Malaysia’s The Star newspaper.

“He asked for help and was immediately sent to the airport’s clinic. At this point, he was experiencing headache and was on the verge of passing out,” said Fadzil. “At the clinic, the victim experienced a mild seizure. He was put into an ambulance and was being taken to Putrajaya Hospital when he was pronounced dead.”

Someone had splashed some liquid on him.