A Vietnamese woman accused of killing Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korea’s leader, has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of causing hurt by potentially deadly means.<\/p>\n
A Malaysian court sentenced Doan Thi Huong to three years and four months in jail, starting from her arrest in February 2017.<\/p>\n
However, under Malaysian law she could be freed by May, her lawyer said.<\/p>\n
Ms Huong would have faced the death penalty if found guilty of the murder.<\/p>\n
Mr Kim, the estranged half-brother of Kim Jong-un, was assassinated at Kuala Lumpur Airport in 2017 in broad daylight, with the toxic nerve agent VX.<\/p>\n
The development effectively means no-one has been held accountable for Mr Kim’s death.<\/p>\n
“In the first week of May, she will go home,” Ms Huong’s lawyer Hisyam Teh Poh Teik told reporters at the Shah Alam court, outside Malaysia’s capital.<\/p>\n
Her step-mother Nguyen Thi Vy told BBC Vietnamese the family was “very happy”.<\/p>\n
“We have felt so thankful for all the support from the government, lawyers and communities,” she said.<\/p>\n
The judge’s decision comes after Ms Huong’s Indonesian co-defendant Siti Aisyah unexpectedly walked free last month, after intervention from Malaysia’s Attorney General.<\/p>\n
Ms Huong’s hopes of a similar outcome were initially dashed on 14 March, when authorities rejected her request for the murder charge to be dropped and said her trial would go ahead.<\/p>\n
She cried in the courtroom, and told reporters: “Only God knows that we did not commit the murder. I want my family to pray for me.”<\/p>\n
Both women have always insisted they were innocent. They say they were tricked into carrying out the killing – which involved smearing a lethal nerve agent on the victim’s face – and believed they were part of a reality TV prank.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head says Monday’s verdict offers Malaysia a face-saving way out of an embarrassing murder trial, but will also be viewed by many as justice for the last remaining defendant.<\/p>\n
However, it means neither defendant was able to testify and give details of how they were brought into the plot, or who recruited them.<\/p>\n
Kim Jong-nam had been waiting to board a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Macau on 13 February 2017, when two women approached him in the departure area.<\/p>\n
CCTV footage showed one of them placing her hands over his face, then both women leaving the scene.<\/p>\n
Mr Kim died on the way to hospital from what was later found to be exposure to VX, one of the most toxic of all known chemical agents.<\/p>\n
North Korea has fiercely denied any involvement in the killing, but four men – believed to be North Koreans who fled Malaysia on the day of the murder – have also been charged in the case.<\/p>\n
They remain at large despite an Interpol “red notice”, equivalent to an international arrest warrant.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"