Two Southeast Asian women—Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 26, and Vietnam’s Doan Thi Huong—on trial (Thu 16/08) for the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the half-brother of the North Korean leader, were told to mount their defense as the Judge Azmi Ariffin found that the prosecution had provided sufficient evidence for the case against the two women to move on to the next phase.
According to Aljazeera, High Court Judge Azmi conveyed, the assassination was a “well-planned conspiracy between the women and four North Koreans at large”. Meaning that the suspects were proven to kill King Jong Nam systematically. Judge Azmi also admitted he and the team required more than two hours to read.
Kim was killed at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in February 2017. It was shown on the security footage that there were two women approaching Kim and one of them smeared a substance on Kim’s face as he waited to board a flight to Macau. Malaysian detectives then tracked down the women as they were seen on the airport’s CCTV executing the action. Later the substance was believed by the investigators to be the toxic nerve agent XV.
Both Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong plead innocent over the assassination. She said they thought they were paid for a prank reality show on TV. However, even though the case is now required for these women to enter their defence, Judge Azmi added “I cannot rule out that this could be a political assassination. Despite that, I am unable to confirm this fact”, as reported by Reuters.com.
The lawyers are confident the pair will be acquitted of murder, insisting that prosecutors have not shown they intended to kill Kim, who was an heir apparent to the North Korean leadership before he fell from grace and went on to live in exile. If one or both of the women are cleared, they will not necessarily walk free immediately, however. Prosecutors could seek to appeal the ruling, and the authorities could still hold them over alleged visa violations.