CCTV footage shows assassination of North Korean leader’s half-brother

February 22, 2017 by Joseph Fitsanakis

A Japanese television channel has aired footage showing the alleged assassination of the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who died in Malaysia on Monday. Investigators believe that Kim Jong-nam, half-brother of North Korea’s supreme leader, and grandson of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-Sung, died after being deliberately poisoned by two women at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Shortly prior to his death, he reported that two women approached him at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and splashed his face with liquid poison —though some reports suggest that he was injected with a poisoned needle. According to Malaysian media, Kim was about to board a flight to Macau, where he had been living in exile since 2007. American and South Korean officials believe that he was killed on orders of the North Korean government in Pyongyang.

The footage —seen here in its entirety— is low quality and appears to have been taken from closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at the airport. It was aired by Fuji TV, a Japanese television station based in Tokyo, Japan. The filmed sequence shows a man dressed in blue jeans, dark blue shirt and gray jacket, who closely resembles Kim, heading toward the low-budget departures hall of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. In subsequent footage he is shown being grabbed from behind by a woman wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, while another woman rapidly approaches him and assaults him from the front. The woman standing behind him appears to quickly put her hands over his face and pull rapidly backwards. The entire attack sequence lasts no more than two seconds, after which both women rapidly walk away. A stunned Kim then hurriedly stumbles away from the scene of the attack, and is seen approaching airport personnel. They direct him to a group of police officers. Another camera shows him trying to describe to the officers the attack that just took place, pointing to his face with his hands. The officers are then seen escorting him to a secure area of the airport.

Fuji TV did not reveal how it acquired the footage, and the connection between it and the death of Kim has not been independently verified or commented on by Malaysian authorities. However, regional observers have confirmed that the airport shown in the footage is indeed the low-budget departures hall of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Malaysian authorities have arrested four people, two men and two women, in connection with the attack. One of the men carries a North Korean passport; the other man carries a Malaysian passport, while the two women are in possession of Vietnamese and Indonesian travel documents. Authorities in Kuala Lumpur say they are still looking for four North Korean men who appear to have left the country shortly after the attack on Kim.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 22 February 2017 | Permalink