Kim Jong-nam’s Alleged Assassin to be Freed

A Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating the half-brother of North Korea’s leader is set to be freed next month, after she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in a Malaysian court today.

Doan Thi Huong was charged with murdering Kim Jong-nam – the half-brother of North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un – in 2017 at Kuala Lumpur’s international airport.

Huong – along with her Indonesian co-defendant, Siti Aisyah – allegedly smeared Kim’s face with a toxic nerve agent. The women claimed that North Korean intelligence agents tricked them into carrying out the assassination.

Now, a month after Malaysian prosecutors dropped the murder charge against Aisyah, they replaced the same charge against Huong with a lesser one, which accuses her of “causing hurt by dangerous weapons”.

Pleading guilty to this new charge, Huong was sentenced today by the court to three years and four months in prison, including time already served. These sentence reductions mean that she will be freed next month.

Speaking to reporters outside the court, Huong said: “This is a fair sentence. This is a fair judgement. I thank the Malaysian government and the Vietnamese government.”

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