Hello everyone, I’m back home in Vietnam again

Doan Thi Huong is looking a relieved lady after arriving back home and escaping the gallows from a murder charge in Malaysia.

HANOI: A Vietnamese woman who stood trial for the assassination of the North Korean leader’s half-brother arrived home, bringing down the curtain on a dramatic and often bizarre two-year murder mystery.

Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of Kim Jong-un who was once seen as heir apparent to the North’s leadership, died in agony after having his face smeared with a banned nerve agent as he waited at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in February 2017.

The sensational killing made headlines around the world and sparked a furious diplomatic row as Seoul accused Pyongyang of an elaborate plot to murder a figure who had spent years in exile and been critical of his family’s rule.

Doan Thi Huong (pic) from Vietnam and Indonesian national

Siti Aisyah were arrested after being spotted on CCTV approaching Jongnam, but they always denied murder.

The women instead insisted they were tricked into carrying out the hit by North Korean agents, who told them it was a reality TV show prank and fled Malaysia after the killing.

The Vietnamese suspect was met by throngs of reporters at Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport on Friday evening, saying she was relieved to be home and happy to start her next chapter.

“I am so happy to come back to my country,” said Doan , wearing large sunglasses as she arrived home with her Malaysian lawyers.

“I don’t know what I will do but I want to be on stage, like an actress – that’s what I want.”

Doan and Siti Aisyah were both on trial in Malaysia for the Cold War-style killing, but in March, prosecutors dropped the murder charge against Siti Aisyah after diplomatic pressure and she flew home.

Last month, they withdrew murder charges against 30-year-old Doan, who pleaded guilty to a reduced count of “causing injury” and was told she would be released in May at the end of her sentence.

More than two years after her arrest, Doan was freed from prison outside the Malaysian capital early on Friday before her flight back home later in the day.

She recalled her days in jail and said she planned to go to church now that she is free.

“I felt so lonely and I missed my home so much – that was my most fearful feeling. I cried all the time,” she told reporters before being whisked away in a van.

While there is relief for the women, no one else is in custody over the murder and those behind the plot are unlikely to ever be punished.

“The assassins have not been brought to justice,” said Doan’s lawyer Hisyam Teh Poh Teik, adding the women’s legal teams consistently argued that four North Koreans who fled Malaysia after the killing, and were charged in absentia, were the real murderers.

The women, who faced death by hanging if convicted of murder, went on trial in October 2017 but the case was slow-moving due to the large number of witnesses and appeals from the defence teams.

The defence stage of the trial had been due to get underway in March before prosecutors suddenly dropped charges against Siti Aisyah, 27, following intense diplomatic pressure from the Indonesian government.

Vietnam then stepped up pressure for Huong’s murder charge to be dropped and at the start of April, prosecutors offered her the lesser charge, paving the way for her release.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang welcomed her return home, saying on Twitter she was “glad” Huong had been released and was “reunited with her family”.

Pyongyang has never admitted to killing Jong-nam – it claims the dead man was a North Korean citizen named Kim Chol – and that the accusations were a smear campaign. — AFP