KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Malaysian police arrested two women in the assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean leader's exiled half brother who South Korean spies say once begged his sibling to spare his life.
On Wednesday, police arrested the first suspect in the case, a woman carrying Vietnamese travel documents bearing the name Doan Thi Huong. She was picked up at the budget terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where Kim Jong Nam fell ill Monday morning. It was not immediately clear whether the passport was genuine.
She was identified using earlier surveillance video from the airport, police said.
Still photos of the video, confirmed as authentic by police, showed a woman in a skirt and long-sleeved white T-shirt with "LOL" across the front.
A second woman, identified as Siti Aishah, 25, was arrested this morning. She was carrying an Indonesian passport.
Her appearance matches the image of a woman captured in airport surveillance videos, said a statement from Khalid Abu Bakar, the inspector general of police.
Medical workers completed an autopsy late Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear if or when Malaysia would release the findings publicly. A Malaysian government official, who also demanded anonymity because of the case's sensitivity, said North Korea objected to the procedure because the country wanted the body returned.
The killing, which reportedly came at the hands of two female assassins, set off waves of speculation over whether North Korea had dispatched a hit squad to kill a man known for his drinking, gambling and complicated family life.
Kim Jong Nam, 46, was estranged from his younger brother, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and had been living abroad for years. He reportedly fell out of favor when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport in 2001, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
According to two senior Malaysian government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case involves sensitive diplomacy, Kim Jong Nam died en route to a hospital on Monday after suddenly falling ill in a terminal of Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
He told medical workers before he died that he had been attacked with a chemical spray, the Malaysian officials said. Multiple South Korean media reports, citing unidentified sources, said two women believed to be North Korean agents killed him with some kind of poison before fleeing in a taxi.
Since taking power in late 2011, Kim Jong Un has executed or purged a number of high-level government officials in what the South Korean government has described as a "reign of terror."
South Korea's spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said Wednesday that North Korea had been trying for five years to kill Kim Jong Nam. The agency did not say definitively that North Korea was behind the killing, just that it was presumed to be a North Korean operation, according to lawmakers who briefed reporters about the private meeting with the spy officials.
The Intelligence Service also cited a genuine attempt by North Korea to kill Kim Jong Nam in 2012, the lawmakers said. The spy agency told them that Kim Jong Nam sent a letter to Kim Jong Un in April 2012, after the assassination attempt, begging for the lives of himself and his family.
The letter said: "I hope you cancel the order for the punishment of me and my family. We have nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and we know that the only way to escape is committing suicide."
Details of the Malaysia case were sketchy, but the Intelligence Service cited Kim Jong Un's "paranoia" about his half brother.
Although Kim Jong Nam had been originally tipped by some outsiders as a possible successor to his late dictator father, Kim Jong Il, others thought that was unlikely because he lived outside the country, including recently in Macau.
Kim Jong Nam had said he had no political ambitions, although he was publicly critical of the North Korean regime and his half brother's legitimacy in the past. In 2010, he was quoted in Japanese media as saying he opposed dynastic succession in North Korea.
Information for this article was contributed by Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Tim Sullivan in New Delhi.
A Section on 02/16/2017