Malaysian police said Saturday they had arrested a North Korean man over the assassination of Kim Jong-Un’s brother, as relations between Pyongyang and Kuala Lumpur nosedived over a battle for his body.
A 46-year-old was arrested on Friday evening with documents that identified him as North Korean citizen Ri Jong Chol, a police statement said, making him the first person from the North to be detained over the case.
Officers have already arrested a woman with a Vietnamese passport and a Malaysian man, as well as an Indonesian woman who foreign police said could have got involved in the murder thinking it was a reality TV prank.
The body of Kim Jong-Nam has been held in a Kuala Lumpur morgue since he was assassinated in a Cold War-style killing at the capital’s international airport on Monday.
Pyongyang accused Malaysia of conspiring with its enemies and said it would reject any results of a post-mortem examination carried out by local police, after Malaysia ignored demands to return the remains.
“The Malaysian side forced the post-mortem without our permission and witnessing. We will categorically reject the result of the post-mortem conducted unilaterally excluding our attendance,” the North Korean ambassador told reporters gathered outside the morgue shortly before midnight on Friday.
The comments were the first official remarks from the country since the killing, but ambassador Kang Chol stopped short of identifying Jong-Nam or touching on his cause of death.
A ‘TV show prank’
Detectives in Kuala Lumpur have arrested a 25-year-old Indonesian woman named Siti Aishah and her Malaysian boyfriend, along with a woman carrying a Vietnamese passport that identified her as Doan Thi Huong, 28.
Indonesian Police Chief Tito Karnavian said he had information from Malaysia that Aishah was tricked into thinking she was simply taking part in pranks for a TV show like “Just For Laughs.”
“Probably she was just used – she did not realise it was an assassination attempt,” he was quoted as saying in local media. (AFP)
