Airport on alert after claim that Kim killers used nerve agent
MALAYSIAN authorities were decontaminating Kuala Lumpur airport yesterday after it emerged that alleged North Korean agents used VX, one of the world’s deadliest nerve agents, to assassinate the elder half-brother of Kim Jong-un.
Kim Jong-nam was murdered last week by a hit squad who smeared his face with VX, which is among the world’s most dangerous chemicals, Malaysian police said yesterday.
The announcement sent a tremor of alarm through the country and raised questions about how Malaysia’s government had allowed passengers to travel through the terminal for more than a week without carrying out a decontamination.
Asked whether people should avoid the airport out of fears of contamination, Malaysia’s police inspector-general Khalid Abu Bakar said: “No. No. No. But I don’t know. I am not the expert.”
Mr Abu Bakar said specialists were beginning to decontaminate the terminal where Mr Kim was killed as well as other sites the suspected killers had visited. It is not known whether the VX could linger in the terminal or have delayed long-term effects on people who may have been exposed to it.
The nerve agent is considered a weapon of mass destruction and much of the world has committed to destroying its stockpiles of the deadly agent. However, North Korea retains one of the world’s largest chemical arsenals and has ample supplies of VX. It is not clear if the alleged North Korean agents were able to smuggle the deadly substance into Malaysia or if they assembled it themselves inside the country. Both possibilities are alarming for the Malaysian security services.
The two women accused of killing Mr Kim both appear to be in good health despite their contact with VX, although one of them began to vomit after her arrest, according to police.
Dr Bruce Goldberger, a toxicologist at the University of Florida, said it was possible that the two women had been given an antidote ahead of carrying out the killing, which would have spared them the worst effects of the toxin.
“I’m intrigued that these two alleged assassins suffered no ill effect from exposure to VX,” Dr Goldberger said. “It is possible that both of these women were given the antidote.”
VX was first developed in Britain in the Fifties by scientists doing research on pesticides. Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein is believed to have used it against Kurdish opponents in the late Eighties while a Japanese death cult was able to kill one person in the mid-Nineties by attacking them with VX.
The same cult, Aum Shinrikyo, used sarin gas – a cousin of VX – to carry out an attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. The attack killed 12 people and badly injured dozens of others.
North Korea has denied responsibility for the murder, saying that the allegations made by Malaysian investigators were fabrications made on behalf of South Korea.
Malaysia has not formally accused the North Korean state of the assassination, but it has said that four North Ko- rean men provided the two women with the deadly nerve agent. All four fled Malaysia shortly after Mr Kim’s death, police said.
North Korea, meanwhile, lashed out at China, one of the isolated state’s few allies, saying Beijing was “dancing to the tune of the US” after it halted coal imports from North Korea.
China made the decision over the weekend in protest at a North Korean missile test, prompting Pyongyang to strike out at China in terms it usually reserves for South Korea. While not naming China directly, North Korean state media referred to “a neighbouring country, which often claims itself to be a ‘friendly neighbour.’”
China is under pressure from the Trump administration to do more to rein in North Korea but its position on its rogue neighbour is complicated. While it looks for stability in North Korea and finds Pyongyang to be a useful foil, Beijing also regularly appears to be exasperated by its neighbour.
Last night pictures emerged of the Vietnamese woman suspected of helping to kill Mr Kim, posing on a motorbike in a bikini. Doan Thi Huong worked at an entertainment outlet, according to Malaysian police, who arrested her along with an Indonesian woman over the murder.
Ms Huong is a keen singer whose Facebook pages feature pouting portraits and pictures of parties. The latest picture shows her posing in a flowery white bikini. It is understood she was working at a motor show in Hanoi, Vietnam. The last post on a Facebook page in the name of “Ruby Ruby”, which family members confirmed to be one of Ms Huong’s accounts, is dated Feb 11 from Kampong Besut, Malaysia.
‘I’m intrigued that these two alleged assassins suffered no ill effect from exposure to VX. It is possible they were given the antidote’