The sole remaining suspect in the murder of Kim Jong-Un's half brother Kim Jong-Nam, will walk free next month after pleading guilty to a lesser charge. Daon Thi Huong, the Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating Kim Jong-Nam was on trial for murdering him with a nerve agent.
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A Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating the North Korean leader's half-brother will walk free in May after pleading guilty to a lesser charge, her lawyer said.
The “fair sentence” was welcomed after the judge handed down the verdict in a Malaysian court. Thi Huong was given a lesser sentence on the basis that she caused only bodily harm to Kim Jong-Nam.
Huong was sentenced her to three years and four months in jail from her arrest in February 2017. But her legal team said that with usual sentence reductions, she would be released next month.
Both women tried for the murdered maintained that they were tricked by North Korean spies into carrying out the assassination that shocked the world, and believed it was a prank for a reality TV show.
The two were allegedly responsible for delivering the potent VX nerve agent that killed Kim Jong Nam in an airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in February 2017. The second accused, an Indonesian woman Siti Aisyah, was freed in March and allowed to return back to her home country. She was released after a period of high-level negotiations and lobbying on behalf of the Indonesian government.
In 2017, Huong then pleaded guilty to a new charge which said she had “purposely caused injury” to Kim by employing “dangerous means” in attacking him with VX at Kuala Lumpur airport.
Huong told reporters: “I'm happy, this is a fair sentence”.
“This is a fair judgement, I thank the Malaysian government and the Vietnamese government,” she added. The two women have been the only suspects in the murder who were arrested. Four North Korean suspects fled immediately after the murder.
The women's lawyers presented them as scapegoats and said the real masterminds were four North Koreans accused alongside them.
There were dramatic scenes when Huong's initial bid for immediate release was rejected last month — she sobbed in the dock and had to be helped out of court by two police officers.
