North Korea claims heart attack, not women, killed Kim Jong Un’s brother

This week two women were charged with murdering Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of North Korea’s leader, in Kuala Lumpur International Airport, spraying his face with a VX nerve agent, killing him in minutes. The two women, Siti Aishah, a 25-year-old mother from Jakarta, and Doan Thi Huong, 28, from rural Vietnam, have maintained they were unwitting pawns. Caught on grainy surveillance video, they say they were duped into thinking they were playing a harmless prank.

Photos released by Malaysian police: suspects Siti Aisyah (l), Doan Thi Huong (r).As they left court, the pair wore bullet-proof vests due to Malaysian authorities fear that co-conspirators would want the women silenced. A Malaysian autopsy concluded that VX nerve agent, an oily poison requiring a sophisticated weapons laboratory to produce, was the cause. This further fueled speculation that North Korea orchestrated the attack, and U.S. officials and South Korean intelligence said the plot was organized by North Korean agents.

According to the charges, the women worked with four other unnamed people, who are still at large.

Kuala Lumpur airport declared “safe” with no trace of VX nerve agent, lethal toxin that killed #NorthKorea man https://t.co/vBFXnZ6Wta pic.twitter.com/WJKIyOwkkt

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) February 26, 2017

Today, however, at a press conference held outside the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, a North Korean envoy stated that North Korea has rejected the Malaysian and U.S. findings. Instead, North Korea claims that Kim Jong Nam probably died of a heart attack because he suffered from heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Malaysian authorities immediately dismissed the claims, and are seeking seven other North Korean suspects, four of whom fled the country on the day of Kim Jong Nam’s death.

Kim Jong Nam, the older, estranged half brother of Kim Jong Un, reportedly fell out of favor with their father, the late Kim Jong Il, in 2001, when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland.

LIMA CHARLIE NEWS, ASEAN BUREAU

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