KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Three people have now
been arrested in connection with the apparent fatal poisoning of the
half-brother of North Korea's leader, with a Malaysian man held to “assist” in
the investigation, police said Thursday.
The man, 26-year-old Muhammad Farid bin
Jalaluddin, has been identified as the boyfriend of an Indonesian woman
arrested earlier Thursday, suspected of being one of the two women who carried
out the brazen attack at Kuala Lumpur airport this week on Kim Jong Nam, the
older half-brother of Kim Jong Un.
“Suspect is currently remanded in custody to
assist investigation,” Khalid Abu Bakar, the inspector-general of police, said
in a statement. Kim Jong Nam, 45, was attacked by two women at Kuala Lumpur
International Airport on Monday as he went to check in for a flight to Macau,
his main base since he went into exile about 15 years ago. They grabbed him and
sprayed some kind of poison on his face.
He sought medical help at the airport but
died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Two women were captured on
surveillance video leaving the scene by taxi, sparking a nationwide hunt for
them. One woman, who was traveling on a Vietnamese passport that identified her
as 29-year-old Doan Thi Huong, was arrested Wednesday as she tried to fly out
of Kuala Lumpur.
She told police she was tricked into
attacking Kim Jong Nam, saying she thought she was just playing a prank on the
man, the Star newspaper reported. She also said she was abandoned by the other
woman and four men who were involved in the attack. They had all been staying
at a hotel not far from the airport, she told police, and when they left her,
she decided to fly to Vietnam from the terminal where the attack took place.
A second woman, identified as Siti Aishah, a
25-year-old Indonesian, was arrested early Thursday. “She was also positively
identified from the CCTV footage at the airport and was alone at the time of
arrest,” Abu Bakar said in an earlier statement.
It was not immediately clear whether the
women were using fake passports, but the Indonesia Foreign Ministry confirmed,
based on information provided by the Malaysian police, that the Aishah was an
Indonesian citizen and has requested consular access to her.
Separately, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, Malaysia's
deputy prime minister, confirmed that the man who was killed was indeed Kim
Jong Nam, the son of former leader Kim Jong Il and older half-brother of Kim
Jong Un. The man was carrying North Korean passport bearing the name “Kim
Chol,” a known alias for Kim Jong Nam.
“The North Korean embassy has confirmed the
identity. This is what the police informed us,” Zahid told reporters. Kim Jong
Nam appeared to have had two passports with two different names - one
“authentic” and one an “undercover document,” he said. However, although the
autopsy has now been completed - despite protests from North Korean diplomats
based in Kuala Lumpur, who wanted to body released to them immediately - there
is still no word on the cause of death.
A North Korean man driving a black Mercedes
with North Korean diplomatic plates refused to answer a journalist's questions
when he drove into the embassy in Kuala Lumpur Thursday afternoon. Embassy
staff have removed the buzzer from the gate to stop journalists from ringing
it.
Malaysia would return Kim Jong Nam's body to
North Korea, Zahid said Thursday, but there were still “procedures to be
followed.” “Our policy is that we have to honor our bilateral relations with
any foreign country,” he told reporters.
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