One of the two women who authorities said poisoned the playboy half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was arrested Wednesday at a Malaysian airport when she returned to the scene of the crime to catch a flight back home, authorities said.
Kim Jong Nam’s purported assassin, identified as 28-year-old Doan Thin Hoang, was taken into police custody at Kuala Lumpur International Airport after she was caught on a surveillance camera affixed to a taxi stand outside the departure terminal.
Hoang was “positively identified from the CCTV footage at the airport and was alone at the time of arrest,” Malaysian police said in a statement released Wednesday. “Any further actions against suspect/suspects will be taken in accordance with the law.”
Grainy images surfaced online Tuesday night, showing the middle- aged Asian woman wearing a short blue skirt and a white shirt emblazoned with the acronym “LOL” – laughing out loud.
Hoang is seen standing outside the airport with her right hand resting on a purse slung across her body.
Both assassins then hopped in a taxi, which drove off.
The next day, Hoang returned to the airport to return to Vietnam, the Malaysian Star reported. She was carrying a Vietnamese travel document with her name printed on it.
“We recognized her from the footage and picked her up. It is her,” Deputy Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Noor Rashid Ibrahim told the Malaysian Star.
Hoang was being questioned at police headquarters in the state of Selangor on the west coast of Malaysia.
Her unidentified accomplice was still at large.
Ibrahim said police were also searching for four men in connection with the case, which seems ripped from a Hollywood spy thriller.
In a scene out of a James Bond film, the toxic spray-wielding femme fatales targeted 45-year-old Jong Nam – the globetrotting black sheep of his North Korean ruling class family — in the airport’s departure hall on Monday morning.
The women – believed to be North Korean agents – unleashed the noxious fumes in the face of Jong Nam as he waited for a flight to Macau, China.
Jong Nam staggered to a receptionist, indicating that he was on the verge of passing out and suffering a mild seizure, police said.
When medical personnel arrived, Jong Nam told them in a final gasp that he was “attacked with a chemical spray,” according to the Associated Press.
The casino-loving Jong Nam – whose late father was former North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il – was rushed to nearby Putrajaya Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
An autopsy performed on Jong Nam’s body has been completed, but Malaysian authorities have yet to release the results. Toxicology tests were conducted to determine the exact type of poison used in the attack.
North Korean officials demanded that the autopsy not go forward, but Malaysian authorities told them to get lost.
“The [North Korean] officials requested that the body be released to them right away, but Malaysia rejected the request, several sources told the Malaysian Star.
There’s been no word yet on who will receive Jong Nam’s remains.
Speculation has run rampant that Jong Un was behind the hit because of his rocky relationship with Jong Nam over the years.
Jong Nam was in line to become the next totalitarian ruler of North Korea, but his star dimmed after his 2001 arrest in Tokyo for possessing a fake passport.
His father banished him from North Korea and he had lived in exile ever since.
Kim Jong Il died of natural causes in 2011, but not before he anointed Jong-un to his throne.
Jong Nam became a vocal opponent of his half-brother, telling the media that Jong-un was too young and inexperienced to run North Korea.
The 33-year-old Jong Un was reportedly infuriated – and may have been behind two botched assassinations of Jong Nam in 2010 and 2011.
With Post Wires