Kim kill accused ‘was paid to fly to Macau’
KUALA LUMPUR: A woman accused of poisoning the North Korean leader’s halfbrother, Kim Jong Nam, at a Malaysian airport had been paid to fly to Macau, Kim’s home at the time, just days before the killing took place, her lawyer told a court.
Kim Jong-nam, half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a critic of his family’s dynastic rule, had been living in exile in Macau.
Indonesian Siti Aisyah is accused with another woman, Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam, of murdering Kim Jong-nam by smearing his face with VX, a banned chemical weapon, at Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb 13 last year.
Defence lawyers say the women thought they were playing pranks for a reality TV show, had been paid for playing similar pranks at shopping malls and airports elsewhere in the weeks before the killing and did not know they were poisoning Kim. They face the death penalty if convicted.
On Feb 8 last year, Ms Siti had been given 4,000 ringgit ($1,020) by Hong Song-hac, a North Korean, to buy tickets to Macau so that she could play pranks for a reality TV show, her lawyer, Gooi Soon Seng, told the court.
But Mr Hong called her later that day to tell her that the trip was off. Mr Gooi did not state whether Hong gave any reasons for the cancellation.
Kim Jong-nam had arrived in Malaysia two days earlier.
Mr Gooi has argued the killing was politically motivated, with many key suspects linked to the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, suggesting his client was merely an unwitting pawn in the attack.
Ms Siti told police she played three pranks at Phnom Penh airport before flying to Jakarta and then back to Malaysia in early February. In Kuala Lumpur, she played 14 pranks at airports, hotels, shopping malls and a train station between Jan 5 and Feb 12 and was paid US$100-$600 for each, she said.