Title: Kim Jong Nam murder: Women Plead not Guilty in Malaysia Trial<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-41464331<\/p>\n
Two women have pleaded not guilty to murdering Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s leader, as their trial in Malaysia got under way.<\/p>\n
The brazen nature of his killing, using\u00a0the highly toxic VX nerve agent<\/a>\u00a0as he waited for a flight at Kuala Lumpur airport in February, shocked the world.<\/p>\n Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, 29, and Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, are accused of rubbing the chemical on his face.<\/p>\n The pair say it was a TV prank and they were tricked by North Korean agents.<\/p>\n Pyongyang has denied any involvement in the killing, but in court prosecutors said that four men – believed to be four North Koreans who fled Malaysia on the day of murder – were also charged in the case.<\/p>\n The incident led to a bitter diplomatic row and\u00a0strained the once cordial ties<\/a>between North Korea and Malaysia, which expelled each other’s ambassadors.<\/p>\n The trial has been eight months in the making and the two women are the only suspects actually charged so far with the murder of Kim Jong-nam.<\/p>\n With their heads bowed and wearing handcuffs and bullet-proof vests, the women walked past a horde of journalists gathered outside the court in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n After the charges were read to them in court in Indonesian and Vietnamese, the two women entered their pleas through interpreters.<\/p>\n If found guilty, the women face the death penalty. Their defence lawyers are likely to argue that the real culprits are North Korean agents, who left Malaysia.<\/p>\n But in his opening remarks, the prosecutor said he aims to prove that the women, along with four people still at large, had the “common intention” to kill Mr Kim.<\/p>\n He said the women had carried out practice runs in Kuala Lumpur shopping malls before the attack, under the “supervision” of the four people, who were not named in court.<\/p>\n Dozens of witnesses, including airport staff who came into contact with Mr Kim, are expected to take the stand in the trial which will run for weeks.<\/p>\n The murder is notable for its sheer audacity, taking place as it did mid-morning in full view of security cameras at Kuala Lumpur’s airport.<\/p>\n On 13 February the two women were seen threading through crowds of people and accosting Mr Kim, before rubbing their hands on his face.<\/p>\n Then there was the speed with which Mr Kim died. Immediately after the attack he sought help from airport staff, who led him to a clinic, but he collapsed and died just minutes later.<\/p>\n After a post-mortem examination, Malaysian authorities announced he had been killed by VX, a toxin so lethal that it is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.<\/p>\n The two women, who were arrested days after the killing, have insisted that they were tricked by North Koreans into taking part in what they thought was a TV prank. Four North Korean men who fled Malaysia shortly after the incident are believed to suspects.\u00a0Interpol issued “red notices” for their arrest in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n Malaysia has named and questioned other North Koreans in relation to the case.<\/p>\n But authorities also allowed three of them to leave the country in late March, in return for North Korea releasing nine Malaysian diplomats and their families.<\/p>\n Mr Kim, who was in his mid-40s, was the estranged older half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.<\/p>\n At the time of his death, he was believed to have been living in self-imposed exile in Macau and was thought to have had some links to China.<\/p>\n Some believe he was killed because he was seen as a potential leader-in-waiting, and therefore a threat to his younger brother, but many analysts have dismissed this.<\/p>\n As with much concerning North Korea, the real motivations behind Mr Kim’s murder are likely to remain unclear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Title: Kim Jong Nam murder: Women Plead not Guilty in Malaysia Trial http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-41464331 Two women have pleaded not guilty to murdering Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s leader, as their trial in Malaysia got under way. The brazen nature of his killing, using\u00a0the highly toxic VX nerve agent\u00a0as he waited for a flight at Kuala Lumpur airport in February,… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":778,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions\/778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
What happened at court?<\/h2>\n
Why was the murder so shocking?<\/h2>\n
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How is North Korea involved?<\/h2>\n
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What does the case tell us about North Korea?<\/h2>\n