Malaysian police arrest man in connection with death of Kim Jong-nam

World Today

DPRK 2

Police in Malaysia announce another break in the mysterious death of Kim Jong-nam. He’s the elder half-brother of DPRK leader Kim Jong-un.  Authorities arrested a man carrying a DPRK passport in connection with the case.

CGTN’s Rian Maelzer reports from Kuala Lumpur.

Earlier police arrested a Vietnamese and an Indonesian woman suspected of having carried out the attack and the second woman’s boyfriend. Kim Jong-nam died last Monday after two women appear to have splashed some kind of toxin in his face at the capital city’s budget air terminal.

Police arrested the man at a Kuala Lumpur apartment saying only that he was 46-year-old DPRK citizen who had what is known an i-Kad, a Malaysian ID for those working or studying in the country.

The arrest came a couple of hours before the DPRK ambassador Kang Chol made a shocking statement to media outside the Kuala Lumpur Hospital mortuary where Kim Jong- nam’s body is being held.

He condemned Malaysian authorities for failing to release the body, said the DPRK would not respect the results of the post-mortem and basically accused Malaysia of being manipulated by South Korea and other powers.  
An ambassador tells CGTN he was shocked by the DPRK envoy’s strong language.

Other diplomatic and police sources tell CGTN that the DPRK ambassador made a huge scene to try to get the body released before the post-mortem was carried out.

But Malaysian authorities are adamant they will not be hurried or bullied into releasing the body.

Malaysia performed a second autopsy because the first procedure was inconclusive, piling on the intrigue surrounding what appeared to be a well-executed assassination at an airport in Kuala Lumpur, an official said Saturday. 

The second autopsy clearly enraged North Korea, which has vowed to reject the results of any post-mortem and demanded that Malaysia turn over the body immediately. Speaking to reporters outside the morgue late Friday, Pyongyang’s ambassador said Malaysian officials may be “trying to conceal something” and “colluding with hostile forces.”

A Malaysian official with knowledge of the investigation confirmed the second autopsy started Friday night and said that the results of the first one were inconclusive. He asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The inconclusive autopsy results raise all sorts of questions about the mysterious death of Kim Jong Nam, but a lack of closure and a lingering sense of the unknown aren’t unusual when it comes to North Korea. While South Korea has blamed North Korea for a slew of notable assassinations or attempted killings in past decades, the North often denies involvement or simply doesn’t comment.

Security analysts say that the ease with which police have been able to identify and find the key suspects and the failure of those suspects to even go into hiding does not suggest they are slick intelligence operatives or well-trained assassins.

Story compiled with information from The Associated Press.