KUALA LUMPUR: As details into Monday’s assassination of Kim Jong-nam begin to emerge, one thing is becoming increasingly clear — that this was a sloppy, hastily planned hit, with too many loose ends.
Central to the investigation is a 28-year-old woman in possession of a Vietnamese travel document bearing the name Doan Thi Huong, and an Indonesian identified as Siti Aishah, 25, who was arrested on Thursday. Thi Huong was arrested at klia2 at 8.20am on Wednesday.
Thi Huong is believed to have been the “trigger person” tasked with eliminating the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
She was the one who allegedly swiped Jong-nam’s face with a towel investigators believe was laced with poison. She was also the one seen running away from the crime scene wearing a brown glove on her left hand, which was extended away from her face. Police also found a powdered substance, which they believe was the poison used in the attack, in her hotel room here.
While the actual hit on Jong-nam itself was quick, clean and effective, the overall plan is riddled with holes.
WHY was the hit carried out in a “high-security area”? International airports are one of the most secure places on earth, with security checkpoints, a high police presence, roving patrols including K-9 units, and surveillance cameras.
This seemed like a plan that was hastily cobbled together and which had to be ready to be executed at a moment’s notice. Their target had been in-country from Feb 6 and had reportedly frequented many of his favourite hangouts here. There would have been plenty of opportunities to get him then, when he was out in the open.
The only problem would have been his security detail, which would have made it difficult for a would-be assassin to get close to him. One explanation that the hit was carried out at the airport was that Jong-nam’s security detail could have dialled back their level of protection there, as he prepared to board his flight back to his home in exile, in Macau.
Mission planners had been watching him for about a year and would have noticed that Jong-nam’s men would have pulled back a bit on their principal’s security arrangements at the airport. The airport was probably where he felt the safest.
THERE was no plan of escape, at least for the two women implicated in the operation. An assassin would have worked out the hit down to the minutiae, with alternate escape routes, forged documents, money, worked out possible contingencies and fallback plans. Advance teams would have scoured the place months beforehand to build an “overall threat picture”, taking everything into account, while support teams would work out ways to “sanitise” the hit team to remove any identifiable traces, features or items that could link them directly to the murder and put in place an escape plan.
It has emerged that when Thi Huong was arrested at klia2, she did not have her passport or a flight ticket on her. Why would she return to the scene of the crime, and more importantly, without a means to leave the country?
The Vietnamese also couldn’t have picked out a more conspicuous outfit to “blend in” with the crowd, opting for a white top with the print “LOL” emblazoned across it.
WHY risk a botched mission by using amateurs unschooled in the black arts of espionage? Police say they are zooming in on the identities of three operatives from North Korea. It is believed they are looking at the possibility of them being part of the North Korean diplomatic mission here, or agents who had been flown in under diplomatic cover to carry out the hit, in which case, there is a possibility that they would have left the country by now. If so, then the women were just pawns — expendable — to buy the real killers who engineered this hit, some time to escape.
WHY would Kim Jong-un risk potential embarrassment and international condemnation by staging the assassination on foreign soil? Unless that was the whole idea in the first place — to serve as a warning to others. As Pyongyang continues to exert its growing influence on the world stage with its nuclear weapons tests and ballistic missile programme, and as Jong-un consolidates his hold on power, nothing sends a clearer message of intimidation than a very public execution of an enemy of the state.
South Korean intelligence officials claimed that the North had been trying to liquidate Jong-nam for five years now. The Guardian said South Korea had jailed a North Korean spy in 2012, who admitted to trying to organise a hit-and-run accident targeting Jong-nam in China in 2010. In 2011, North Korean assassins reportedly tried to shoot Jong-nam in Macau, although details are still sketchy.
After another attempt to kill him in 2012, Jong-nam reportedly pleaded for his life, according to South Korean lawmakers, who had been briefed by the head of the country’s national intelligence service. With this success, the world has been put on notice.