Malaysian authorities have refused to turn Jong-Nam’s body over to North Korea, as the embassy there has said it would conduct its own autopsy – “a move decried by North Korea as part of a broader conspiracy engineered by South Korea and the US”, the report said.
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The 46-year-old was reportedly poisoned by two women on behalf of North Korea at Kuala Lumpur airport last week. “This is not just like shooting a movie”, he said.
Addressing a news conference on Wednesday, national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said they were taking adequate measures to safeguard the body at the mortuary after several attempts were made to break into the facility, apparently to remove the corpse.
None has so far come forward.
There are reports that Hyon is still in Malaysia, hiding out at the North Korean Embassy.
The North Korean statement added that it has already proposed a joint investigation into the incident and said it was prepared to dispatch a “delegation of jurists”.
Asked whether the five North Korean suspects had masterminded the attack, Khalid said he believed they were “heavily involved” in the murder.
Suspects Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong (top L), North Korean Ri Jong Chol (top R), Indonesian Siti Aisyah (bottom L) and Malaysian Muhammad Farid Bin Jallaludin (bottom R) are seen in this combination of undated handouts released by Malaysia.
South Korean and U.S. officials claims the assassination on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s brother was carried out by North Korean agents.
According to early reports, the women claimed they were a part of a Japanese reality prank show, and their interaction with Kim was not meant to cause harm.
Park Sung-hwan, a forensic specialist at Korea University, said, “I’ve never heard of a toxin that is rubbed on a person’s face to make the victim inhale it”.
Unlike most of his fellow citizens he was multilingual and travelled around the world from a young age, and while he never crossed to a position of dissent – by speaking out about human rights abuses or befriending defectors – a North Korea with him in the power structure could have looked remarkably different.
1983: Bomb explodes at Myanmar memorial during SK President Chun Doo-hwan’s visit. One bomber confesses to being NK military. Bomb explodes after pair disembarks in Abu Dhabi – 115 people, mostly from SK, die.
South Korea, however, is using banks of loudspeakers to broadcast across the Demilitarised Zone that divides the two Koreas the news of the murder of Kim Jong-nam. Suspected to be NK agents.
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“This proves that the South Korean authorities [have] long expected the case since it worked out a scenario for it”, the statement claimed.
