Tag: Siti Aisyah

Indonesian Woman Accused of Murdering Kim Jong-nam Released from Prison

| March 12, 2019

It is speculated that this release was a political favor that Malaysia gave to Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo who goes up for re-election next month:

Indonesian Siti Aisyah, center, smiles as she leaves Shah Alam High Court in Shah Alam, Malaysia, Monday, March 11, 2019. The Indonesian woman held two years on suspicion of killing North Korean leader’s half brother Kim Jong Nam was freed from custody Monday after prosecutors unexpectedly dropped the murder charge against her.

 An Indonesian woman held for two years on suspicion of killing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half brother was freed from custody Monday after Malaysian prosecutors unexpectedly dropped the murder charge against her.
Siti Aisyah cried and hugged her Vietnamese co-defendant, Doan Thi Huong, before leaving the courtroom and being ushered away in an embassy car. She told reporters that she had only learned Monday morning that she would be freed.

“I feel very happy,” she said later at a news conference at the Indonesian Embassy. “I didn’t expect that today will be my freedom day.”
The two young women were accused of smearing VX nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam’s face in an airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur on Feb. 13, 2017. They have said they thought they were taking part in a prank for a TV show. They had been the only suspects in custody after four North Korean suspects fled the country the same morning Kim was killed.
The High Court judge discharged Aisyah without an acquittal after prosecutors applied to drop the murder charge against her. They did not give any reason.

The trial will resume Thursday, with prosecutors expected to reply to a request by Huong’s lawyers asking the government to similarly withdraw the charges against her.
Indonesia’s government said its continual high-level lobbying resulted in Aisyah’s release. The foreign ministry said in a statement that she was “deceived and did not realize at all that she was being manipulated by North Korean intelligence.”
It said Aisyah, a migrant worker, believed that she was part of a reality TV show and never had any intention of killing Kim.

MSN via a reader tip

You can read much more at the link, but I like how they call Aisyah a migrant worker when she was a prostitute in Malaysia and that is how the North Korean agent recruited her.

Anyway her co-defendant Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam I suspect will get released as well since Aisyah was let go. The four North Korean agents that organized the murder all fled back to North Korea which means likely no one will be held responsible for murdering someone with a dangerous nerve agent in the middle of a busy international airport.

How Female Assassin Siti Aisyah was Recruited By North Korean Agents to Murder Kim Jong-nam

| September 28, 2017

Here is an interesting article from GQ magazine of all places that provides an in-depth look at how

Siti Aisyah, left, and Doan Thi Huong, the women recruited for the murder plot.

The female assassins had been identified on the CCTV footage with almost comic ease—the Vietnamese woman’s white jumper, adorned with LOL, proved easy to track through the grainy footage. Catching her was simple, too: Doan Thi Huong, 29, was arrested the day after the killing, when she returned to the airport. She had been born in a rural Vietnamese village, had her dreams of celebrity dashed when she lasted 20 seconds on Vietnam Idol, and ended up working as an escort in Hanoi, where she’d been recruited by an undercover North Korean agent.

At 2 A.M. the morning after the murder, Malaysian police marched through the dank hallways of the Flamingo Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, in which stained springless mattresses leaned against walls to air out during the day. In a third-floor room, the second alleged assassin, a 25-year-old from Indonesia named Siti Aisyah, had just finished servicing a Malaysian man and sent him on his way when the officers burst through the unlocked door.

From the CCTV footage, Doan’s and Siti’s guilt seemed clear until, under interrogation, they both separately explained that they thought they’d merely slathered Jong-nam with a harmless liquid for a hidden-camera TV show.  (………)

While both women’s lives followed a remarkably similar lopsided arc of disappointment from remote hamlets to seedy nightclubs to prison cells where they now face death, it was Siti’s footprints that I tracked across Asia because, having lived for three years in Indonesia, I had met dozens of vulnerable migrant women who could have suffered her fate. I felt like there was bound to be more to the story than the Malaysian police had reported. And sure enough, the truth I ultimately discovered was far more complicated than I ever could have imagined.

Siti was recruited by the North Koreans at 3 A.M. on January 5, 2017, outside a notorious bar in Kuala Lumpur. On paper, she worked as a masseuse in the Flamingo Hotel’s spa, but when I visited in July, a worker immediately asked, “You want to sleep with a Thai or Indonesian girl?” Later, one of Siti’s friends laughed when I said I’d heard she’d given massages there, declaring, “She was totally sex!”  [GQ Magazine]

You can read the rest of the elaborate scheme the North Koreans put together to recruit Aisyah to conduct the supposed comedy pranks.  Here is a very insightful part of the article:

Nam explained, “Pyongyang wanted to horrify the rest of the world by releasing a chemical weapon at an airport.” By unleashing such weaponry in a place symbolically shared by the global community—an international airport—North Korea was warning everyone not to cross it. As Nam concluded, “Jong-un wants to reign a long time and negotiate as a superpower. The only way to do that is to keep the world in fear of his weapons. He has a grand design, and this is part of it.”

In the end, Pyongyang suffered no significant consequences from the assassination. The people on death row for the murder are two Southeast Asian women, whom Nam believes are not guilty.

This is something world government will have to consider, in response to a preemptive strike against North Korea they could retaliate by releasing VX nerve agents in international airports.  If people thought the aftermath of 9-11 was bad for the airline industry could you imagine what would happen if multiple airports are targeted with VX nerve agents?

Indonesian Arrested for the Murder of Kim Jong-nam Described as a “Quiet and Innocent” Girl

| February 19, 2017

She may be quiet, but it appears Siti Aisyah is no longer innocent:

Siti Aisyah
Siti Aisyah

For those who have met Siti Aisyah, the notion that the 25-year-old woman from Serang, Banten, might have been capable of allegedly taking part in a vicious plot to murder a high-profile figure in a foreign country is hard to swallow.

Siti, who is believed to have been arrested in Malaysia for her alleged role in the murder of Kim Jong-nam, the estranged brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, has been described by her neighbours and relatives as a “quiet and innocent” girl.

Siti once lived in a house located in a small alley in the densely populated quarters of Tambora district, West Jakarta. There she resided with her former husband Gunawan Hasyim and former father-in-law Liang Kiong, known as Akiong.

To her neighbours, Siti is just one of millions of Indonesians looking for job opportunities in neighbouring Malaysia.

 “She rarely mingled with others. [But] I’m sure that it is her. I recognise her from the picture and I had seen her often back then,” said one of the neighbours named Anisa Fitri as quoted by Antara news agency. “She is a quiet and innocent person from the region,” she added.

Halimah, another neighbor who has lived in Tambora since 1969, was stunned by the news, saying that “[Siti] is poor; it’s a pity that she has been dragged into the case. She once lived next door to me before she moved [to her then father-in-law’s house],” she said.  [The Star]

You can read more about her at the link.

Woman Linked to Kim Jong-nam Murder Traveled to Vietnam and South Korea with North Korean Agent

| February 19, 2017

Here is the latest details about the women who apparently were duped into murdering Kim Jong-nam by a North Korean agent who allegedly was able to travel to South Korea:

Female suspects Doan (left) and Siti Aishah.

The two women suspected to have murdered North Korean Kim Jong-nam were allegedly “recruited” by a mysterious man to carry out the deadly task as early as three months ago.

According to a report by China Press, both Siti Aishah, 25, and Doan Thi Huong, 29, were not North Korean “special agents, but were possibly duped by a spy ring to commit the assassination.

Indonesian national Siti Aishah was arrested at 2am on Thursday, while Doan, who holds a Vietnamese passport, was arrested a day earlier.

China Press reported that the mystery man, believed to be a spy, got to know Doan about three months ago in Malaysia, who eventually became his escort.

The mystery man even took her on several overseas trips, including on one to Vietnam, where they visited her hometown and another trip to South Korea.

China Press reported the mystery man then introduced Doan to the four men still wanted by the police in connection with the killing.

It reported that the mystery man got to know Siti Aishah about a month ago, but only introduced the two women to each other recently when he told them about a “prank ” he wanted them to pull off.

The two women have claimed that they had no idea that it would lead to trouble as they thought it was only supposed to be a filming of the prank being carried out.

They apparently rehearsed the “spoof” many times and were able to carry out the process proficiently.  [The Star]

You can read more at the link.