Security camera footage obtained by Japanese television appears to show a careful and deliberate attack last week on the exiled half brother of North Korea’s ruler, while Malaysia said on Monday it had recalled its ambassador to North Koreaamid rising tensions between the nations.
The footage, obtained by Fuji TV and often grainy and blurred, seems to show two women approaching Kim Jong Nam from different directions as he stands at a ticketing kiosk at the budget terminal of the Kuala Lumpur airport. One apparently a Vietnamese woman now under arrest comes up behind him and appears to hold something over his mouth for a few seconds.
Then the women turn and calmly walk off in different directions. More footage shows Kim, a long-estranged scion of the family that has ruled North Korea for three generations, walking up to airport workers and security officials, gesturing at his eyes and seemingly asking for help. He then walks alongside as they lead him to the airport clinic.
Fuji TV has not revealed how it acquired the video footage, which was taken by a series of security cameras as Kim arrived for a flight to Macau, where he had a home.
Kim, in his mid-40s, died shortly after the attack, en route to a hospital after suffering a seizure, Malaysian officials say.
Malaysia’s deputy national police chief, Noor Rashid Ibrahim, said Sunday that Kim had told airport customer service workers that “two unidentified women had swabbed or had wiped his face with a liquid and that he felt dizzy.”
Since Kim’s death last week, authorities have been trying to piece together details of what appeared to be an assassination. Malaysian police have so far arrested four people carrying identity documents from North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
Investigators are looking for four North Korean men who flew out of Malaysia the same day as the attack, Malaysian police said Sunday.
