Cops play waiting game

N KOREA EMBASSY: SUSPECTS LINKED TO KIM JONG-NAM MURDER ‘HIDING’

We’ll wait five years outside, but we will question them, vows Malaysian chief.

Malaysia will wait to question suspects in the Kim JongNam killing believed to be holed up in Kuala Lumpur’s North Korean embassy “even if it takes five years,” the country’s police chief said yesterday.

A police cordon was set up outside the embassy after Pyongyang announced it would ban Malaysians from leaving North Korea, prompting an immediate tit-fortat move from Kuala Lumpur.

The travel bans are just the latest twist in a heated diplomatic row over the Cold War-style assassination of the half-brother of North Korea’s leader in Malaysia last month, which has seen Kuala Lumpur expel Pyongyang’s envoy and vice-versa.

“We will wait, if it takes five years, we will wait outside. Definitely somebody will come out,” police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said at a press conference in Penang, adding that he believed three people wanted in connection to the murder were in the building.

“This morning the deputy prime minister issued instructions not to allow any North Korean embassy staff to leave the country,” Deputy Home Minister Nur Jazlan Mohamed told journalists outside the embassy.

“At the moment we’re trying to ascertain their numbers and their movements.”

Police set up a barricade with cars blocking both ends of the street leading up to the North Korean embassy shortly after noon.

About a dozen armed officers wearing bulletproof vests were stationed at each end of the road.

Police were seen tracking movements out of the embassy in a ledger.

Two women have been charged with the killing, but Malaysian police have also named eight North Korean suspects. – AFP