THE poison used to kill the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader at a crowded air terminal in Malaysia was the banned chemical weapon VX nerve agent, police have said.
The announcement came as officers began a sweep of the airport for any traces of the deadly toxin.
The revelation that VX nerve agent was used in the February 13 attack boosted speculation that Pyongyang dispatched a hit squad to kill Kim Jong Nam, the outcast older sibling of North Korea’s ruler.
The case also raised questions about public safety, although there was no sign that any bystanders had fallen ill.
Police said one of the alleged attackers had been vomiting in the hours after the attack, but there were no reports that anyone else was sick.
Asked if people should avoid the airport because of fears of contamination, Malaysia’s Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said: “No. No. No. But I don’t know. I am not the expert.”
He said experts would decontaminate the airport to ensure its safety.
VX nerve agent, deadly even in minute amounts, was detected on Mr Kim’s eyes and face, Mr Khalid said earlier in a written statement, citing a preliminary analysis from the country’s Chemistry Department.
“Our preliminary finding of the chemical that caused the death of Kim Chol was VX nerve,” he said.
Kim Chol is the name on the passport found on the victim, but a Malaysian official previously confirmed he is North Korea leader Kim Jong Un’s older half-brother. According to Malaysian investigators, two female suspects coated their hands with the liquid toxin and wiped it on Mr Kim’s face as he waited for a flight home to Macau, where he lived with his family.
He sought help from airport staff but he fell into convulsions and died on the way to the hospital within two hours of the attack, police said.
Malaysian police say the women washed their hands immediately after the attack as they allegedly had been trained to do.
Malaysian police had initially said no one besides Mr Kim had been taken ill. But Mr Khalid told reporters that one of the two women accused of wiping the toxin on Mr Kim’s face became sick later and suffered from vomiting. He declined to say which woman had been sick, the Indonesian woman or the Vietnamese woman in custody.
Mr Khalid said police were still investigating how the lethal nerve agent entered Malaysia.
Police previously said the airport had not been decontaminated
but that passengers should be confident it was safe. Asked yesterday whether it had still not been decontaminated, Mr Khalid said: “We are doing it now.”
VX nerve agent can take days or even weeks to evaporate. It could have contaminated anywhere Mr Kim was after the attack, including medical facilities and the ambulance he was transported in, experts said.
Mr Kim’s very public assassination has unleashed a diplomatic crisis. North Korea has denounced Malaysia’s investigation as full of “holes and contradictions” and manipulated by Pyongyang’s enemies.
Dr Bruce Goldberger, a leading toxicologist who heads the forensic medicine division at the University of Florida, said even a tiny amount of VX nerve agent can be fatal. An antidote can be administered by injection.
US medics and military personnel carried kits with them on the battlefield during the Iraq war in case they were exposed to the chemical weapon.
“It’s a very toxic nerve agent. Very, very toxic,” he said. “I’m intrigued that these two alleged assassins suffered no ill effect from exposure to VX. It is possible that both of these women were given the antidote.”
