A woman holding a Vietnamese passport was arrested on Wednesday in connection with the assassination of Kim Jong-Nam, a half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-Un, Malaysia’s police chief said.
Kim Jong-Nam was reportedly attacked by two women believed to be North Korean agents in Malaysia, in a black-ops reminiscent of past high-profile murders.
Two women moved in a brazen attack to use poison-filled syringes against the man at a baggage check-in counter at the Malaysian airport, reports said.
He was a high-profile figure, living in Macao and said to be under the protection of China.
The plot thickens with the Vietnamese government now scrambling to elucidate the mystery of the Vietnamese passport.
Vietnamese authorities are asking whether the arrested suspect is really a Vietnamese citizen.
Foreign analysts said the attackers were loyalists of the North Korean leader.
The woman was arrested in the morning after she appeared at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2, apparently in an attempt to leave the country after being on the run since Monday.
The arrested woman had a Vietnamese passport in the name of Doan Thi Huong born on May 31, 1988.
The 29-year-old woman detained at KLIA2 was from Nam Dinh, Vietnam, according to details on her passport.
The victim, killed Monday at the airport, is said to have escaped previous murder attempts by the North Korean secret services.
The suspect was “positively identified from the CCTV footage at the airport and was alone at the the time of arrest,” the Malaysian police said.
She is being held at the Selangor police headquarters for questioning.
Besides a female accomplice, police were also looking for “several more” suspects involved in the killing.
Kim Jong-Nam killing was ‘planned very meticulously’ said a South Korean analyst to AFP.