That same day, police arrested a woman carrying an Indonesian passport identifying her as 25-year-old Siti Aishah.
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A high-profile transnational murder case in Malaysia has taken a surprising twist after local authorities announced on Thursday the arrest of two suspects, including an Indonesian woman.
Kim Jong-nam died after a poison attack carried out by two women at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia.
Though the North’s state media remains silent on the incident, as was widely expected, foreign news outlets such as AP and AFP reporting from Pyongyang highlighted the stark, ironic contrast between the festive mood and the murder’s shockwaves sweeping through the globe.
Kim Jong Nam and Kim Jong Un are sons of former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
North Korea was on the US terrorism sponsor list for the 1987 mid-air bombing of a Korean Airlines flight that killed all 115 people aboard.
He asked for medical assistance at the klia2 service counter but died on the way to the hospital.
A North Korean official was pictured looking furious yesterday as a delegation failed to block the autopsy amid claims Jong-nam was trying to defect.
Malaysian authorities have conducted an autopsy but have not yet released the results.
An unidentified Malaysian government official told The Associated Press that North Korea “objected to the procedure because they wanted the body back”.
Kim Jong-nam was estranged from his younger half brother, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and had been living overseas for years.
Since taking power in late 2011, Kim Jong Un has executed or purged a slew of high-level government officials in what the South Korean government has described as a “reign of terror”.
Lee said, and there was an assassination attempt against him in 2012.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said he believed the police had received a request from North Korean officials for the body, and said it could be eventually released to next of kin through the North Korean embassy.
She also said she was abandoned by the other woman and four men who were involved in the attack.
But Agung said his office has not obtained any information about her occupation or the status by which she entered Malaysia. They say the women sprayed liquid droplets at him and then held a cloth over his face.
A female Indonesian suspect and a Malaysian man thought to be her boyfriend were both detained on Thursday.
As a consensus grows that the country’s political leaders ordered Mr. Kim’s death, multiple theories are emerging for why they singled him out, and why now.
Those critics accuse North Korea of being a state that operates outside the law.
The other suspect held Vietnamese travel documents bearing the name Doan Thi Huong, 28.
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I tried to track some of Kim Jong-nam’s old haunts in Kuala Lumpur, which led me to a Korean restaurant in the centre of town. They had all been staying at a hotel not far from the airport, she told police, and when they left her, she made a decision to fly to Vietnam from the terminal where the attack took place.
