Inside Kim Jong-nam's public assassination
A public assassination in an international airport, carried out by two young women using a weapon of mass destruction.
In a Sunday Night ground breaking investigation, Steve Pennells reports on the North Korean murder plot that could not have been more brazen or more bizarre.
The audacious hit in a public airport terminal was ordered by North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un to eliminate a potential rival, his half brother Kim Jong-nam.
The murder weapon was the deadly nerve agent VX.
But Special Representative of the North Korean Foreign Ministry Alejandro Cao de Benos told Sunday Night that North Korea had been set up and the police not only have the wrong suspect, they don’t even have the right victim.
"This was not Kim Jong-nam," he told Sunday Night.
"We don't know the reasons, we tried to clarify why someone kill this person [sic] if he was really killed, if it was not a plot from their own CIA in South Korea intelligence and with a nerve agent supposed to be a weapon of mass destruction which is ridiculous."
CCTV footage from Kuala Lumpur International Airport shows the murder was committed by two women who rubbed a cloth containing the nerve agent onto the face of Kim Jong-nam. He collapsed in the airport’s medical centre and died soon after.
Chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon believes North Korea is one of only a handful of countries with the capability to manufacture VX.
“VX is the ultimate chemical weapon,” Hamish said.
“Less than a pin head size of VX is enough to kill a grown person.”
Western intelligence agencies believe the sickening plot was devised by Kim Jong-un as a warning to the rest of the world.
“I think they want to be a part of the weapons of mass destruction terror club. I think they’re saying, ‘we are a serious player here, you can no longer ignore us’,” Hamish said.
The two women at the centre of the murder plot, 28-year-old Doan Thi Huong and 25-year-old Siti Aisyah, claim they were fooled into believing they were taking part in a TV prank show and they thought the substance on the cloth was harmless oil.
Both have been charged with murder and face the death penalty.
Siti’s lawyer, Gooi Soon Seng, said there were fears his client could become a victim of another North Korean hit.
“I have been a lawyer for 37 years and this is the first time my client ever wears [sic] a bulletproof vest to the court,” he told Sunday Night.
