KUALA LUMPUR // North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s half brother was murdered with a nerve agent manufactured for chemical warfare and listed by the UN as a weapon of mass destruction, Malaysian police said on Friday.
Releasing a preliminary toxicology report on Kim Jong-nam’s death at Kuala Lumpur airport, police revealed the poison used by the assassins was the odourless, tasteless and highly toxic nerve agent VX.
North Korea has a vast chemical weapons stockpile, including VX, of up to 5,000 tonnes, South Korean experts claimed.
Traces of VX were detected on swabs of the dead man’s face and eyes, police said. Leaked CCTV footage from the February 13 murder shows him being approached by two women who appear to push something in his face.
A tiny drop of the agent is enough to fatally damage a victim’s central nervous system.
One of the two women suspects who remain in custody fell ill after the killing. Police said she had been vomiting.
National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar added atomic energy experts would sweep the airport’s busy terminal where the Cold War-era attack took place for traces of the toxin, the most deadly chemical agent yet developed, as well as other locations the women passed through.
Mr Khalid said detectives would look for the source of the VX.
“We are investigating how it entered the country,” he said.
However, he added that “if the amount of the chemical brought in was small, it would be difficult for us to detect”.
A leading regional security expert said it would not have been difficult to smuggle VX into Malaysia in a diplomatic pouch, which are not subject to regular customs checks.
North Korea has used the pouches “to smuggle items including contraband and items that would be subjected to scrutiny if regular travel channels were used”, said Rohan Gunaratna, the head of the Singapore-based International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research.
Mr Khalid has said the woman who ambushed Kim from behind clearly knew she was carrying out a poison attack, dismissing claims that she thought she was taking part in a TV prank.
“The lady was moving away with her hands towards the bathroom,” Mr Khalid said earlier this week. “She was very aware that it was toxic and that she needed to wash her hands.”
The leaked CCTV footage shows Kim asking for help from airport staff, who direct him to a clinic, after he is ambushed.
Police said he suffered a seizure and died before he reached hospital.
Detectives are holding three people – women from Indonesia and Vietnam, and a North Korean man – but want to speak to seven others, four of whom are believed to have fled to Pyongyang.
One man wanted for questioning, who is believed to be still in Malaysia, is senior North Korean embassy official Hyon Kwang Song.
Police have acknowledged that his diplomatic status prevents them from questioning him unless he surrenders himself.
However, a North Korean official outside Pyongyang’s Kuala Lumpur embassy said that Malaysia had not submitted a request to speak to Hyon, despite the police chief earlier saying the embassy would be asked for assistance.
North Korea’s state media on Thursday launched attacked Malaysia for “immoral” handling of the case and for playing politics with the deceased.
North Korea has never acknowledged the victim as the estranged brother of leader Kim Jong-un and the lengthy KCNA dispatch avoided any reference to the dead man’s identity, calling him only “a citizen” of North Korea “bearing a diplomatic passport”.
The only known use of VX is as a chemical warfare agent and the US government’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes it as the “most potent” of all nerve agents.
“It is possible that any visible VX liquid contact on the skin, unless washed off immediately, would be lethal,” the CDC said on its website.
VX was used by Japan’s Aum cult in the 1994 murder of an office worker in Osaka, and in the attempted murder of two other people.
The cult led by guru Shoko Asahara used sarin nerve gas for a deadly attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. Asahara was sentenced to death for the subway murders as well as producing deadly substances, including sarin and VX.
* Agence France-Presse
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
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How much sugar is in chocolate Easter eggs?
- The 169g Crunchie egg has 15.9g of sugar per 25g serving, working out at around 107g of sugar per egg
- The 190g Maltesers Teasers egg contains 58g of sugar per 100g for the egg and 19.6g of sugar in each of the two Teasers bars that come with it
- The 188g Smarties egg has 113g of sugar per egg and 22.8g in the tube of Smarties it contains
- The Milky Bar white chocolate Egg Hunt Pack contains eight eggs at 7.7g of sugar per egg
- The Cadbury Creme Egg contains 26g of sugar per 40g egg
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4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
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6.20pm: West Acre
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Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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Name: Kumulus Water
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The Perfect Couple
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