Accused given $124 for airport ‘prank attack’
MALAYSIA: One of two women suspected of using a deadly nerve agent to assassinate the halfbrother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has claimed she was paid the equivalent of NZ$124 for what she thought was a harmless prank.
The murder of Kim Jong Nam two weeks ago at Kuala Lumpur airport has heightened tensions between Malaysia and North Korea and triggered a sweep of the airport terminal for toxins.
Indonesian citizen Siti Aisyah, 25, claims she was told she was playing a prank for a reality television show, according to an Indonesian diplomat. The other suspect, Doan Thi Huong, from Vietnam, also thought she was making a comedy video, her country’s foreign ministry said.
Four North Korean men are said to have provided the women with poison to carry out the attack. The men then fled but the women were arrested.
Malaysia has adopted a harsher tone towards North Korea since the disclosure that VX, one of the world’s deadliest nerve agents, was used in the assassination.
Police said yesterday that an arrest warrant will be issued for Hyon Kwang Song, a North Korean diplomat who the Malaysians want to question.
Abdul Samah Mat, the police chief leading the investigation, said Hyon would be given ‘‘reasonable’’ time to come forward.
‘‘And if he failed to turn up, then we will go to the next step by getting a warrant of arrest,’’ he said.
Malaysian police have completed a sweep of Kuala Lumpur’s airport terminal where Kim Jong Nam was attacked and say they found no trace of the nerve agent that was suspected to have been used to kill him.
Senior police official Abdul Samah Mat, who is leading the investigation, declared the budget terminal at Kuala Lumpur’s airport a ‘‘safe zone’’ after the sweep detected no hazardous material. Officers in protective gear conducted the two-hour sweep yesterday.
The sweep involved officers from the police’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear teams, as well as the fire department’s hazardous materials unit and the government’s atomic energy board.
Malaysia’s Health Minister S Subramaniam says autopsy results suggest a nerve agent caused serious paralysis that led to the death of Kim Jong Nam.
Subramaniam said yesterday the finding confirmed the hospital’s autopsy result, which suggested a chemical agent caused ‘‘very serious paralysis’’ that led to death ‘‘in a very short period of time’’. He said the VX agent can lead to death very quickly in high doses.
Subramaniam said there had been no reports of anyone else being sickened by the toxin since the attack. – Telegraph Group, AP