The death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s estranged half brother, Kim Jong Nam, remains shrouded in mystery.
Malaysian officials announced today that a cause of death has still not been determined – more than a week after he passed away following an attack at Kuala Lumpur airport.
Noor Hisham Abdullah, Malaysia’s Director General of Health, told reporters that an initial autopsy showed no evidence of a heart attack or any sign of puncture wounds.
When pressed on the question of whether Kim Jong Nam could have been poisoned, Adbullah declined to answer, saying health officials were still waiting for lab test results and could neither confirm the identity of the body nor the cause of death at this time.
“We have to confirm with the lab report before we can make any conclusive remark,” he told reporters. Members of Kim Jon Nam’s family have yet to come forward to provide DNA identification or claim his body.
The first accounts of Kim Jong Nam’s death in the local press alleged that he was ambushed at Kuala Lumpur Airport by two female assassins who injected him with a poison needle.
Both were arrested in connection with the death, along with two other people with officials documents from North Korea and Malaysia.
Heat Street revealed Thursday that one of the alleged assailants had identified herself to Malaysian authorities as a Vietnamese YouTube personality.
The two women involved, 25-year-old Indonesian Siti Aisyah and 28-year-old Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, both told police they were duped into carrying out the killing having been offered $100 to take part in what they thought to be a ‘video prank’.
Chilling security footage of the killing surfaced on Monday, showing that the two attackers took less than three seconds to carry out the assault on Kim Jong Un’s brother.
Kim Jong Nam, an outspoken critic of the North Korean regime who often publicly condemned his family’s tight control over the country, had gone into hiding in Malaysia after the execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, in December 2013.
He had been the target of the regime for years and survived an assassination attempt in Macau in 2011.
