North Korean diplomats have objected to the postmortem examination, Malaysian officials say, but Kuala Lumpur has stood firm
The body of Kim Jong-nam, the assassinated brother of North Korea’s leader, will not be released until his family have provided DNA samples, Malaysia said on Friday, despite a request from Pyongyang. Detectives in Kuala Lumpur are trying to get to the bottom of the cloak-and-dagger murder that South Korea says was carried out by poison-wielding female agents working for their secretive northern neighbour. Forensic specialists were on Friday carrying out tests on samples from the dead man’s body to try to determine the toxin that was apparently sprayed in his face as he readied to board a plane earlier this week. North Korean diplomats have objected to the postmortem examination, Malaysian officials say, but Kuala Lumpur has stood firm, and said on Friday it would not release the body until procedures were complete. “So far no family member or next of kin has come to identify or claim the body. We need a DNA sample of a family member to match the profile of the dead person,” Selangor state police chief Abdul Samah Mat said. “North Korea has submitted a request to claim the body, but before we release the body we have to identify who the body belongs to.” Laboratory technicians working on blood and tissue samples would “conduct the analysis as soon as possible”, Dr Cornelia Charito Siricord of the science ministry’s chemistry department told national news agency Bernama. Police were meanwhile questioning two women – one travelling on a Vietnamese passport and the other on an Indonesian document – as well as a Malaysian man.
