Kuala Lumpur, Feb 24: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s half brother was assassinated with a lethal nerve agent manufactured for chemical warfare and listed by the UN as a weapon of mass destruction, Malaysian police said today.
Releasing a preliminary toxicology report on Kim Jong-Nam’s murder 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 said today.
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 the portly Kim being approached by two women who appear to push something in his face.
Just 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 brazen killing, with police saying Friday 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 ever developed, as well as other locations the women passed through.
Khalid added detectives would look for the source of the VX.
“We are investigating how it entered the country,” Khalid Abu Bakar 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 told AFP 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 previously 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.
Khalid has previously 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,” 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.
