Posted on 03/18/2017 9:12:51 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
N. Korea hit squad staged 10 rehearsals for attack on Kim
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
March 15, 2017 at 18:10 JST
The team dispatched by North Korea to kill Kim Jong Nam rehearsed the attack at least 10 times before carrying out the hit in Malaysia on Feb. 13. sources said.
Siti Aisyah, a 25-year-old Indonesian woman who is in custody and suspected of spraying Kim's face with VX nerve agent, took part in the practice sessions, the sources said. Kim, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, died shortly after the incident in Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Aisyah told police she thought the liquid was harmless and simply for a prank.
According to Indonesian authorities, the woman practiced her technique in Cambodia in late January on three occasions. Seven more rehearsals were held in crowded areas of Kuala Lumpur, including the airport, a shopping mall, hotels and a train station.
A foreign man who called himself “James” joined Aisyah on her trip to Cambodia, one of the handful of nations with friendly ties to Pyongyang. This man is believed to be Ri Ji U, a 29-year-old North Korean national sought by Malaysian police.
Aisyah apparently also met O Jong Gil, 54, one of the four suspects who helped oversee Kim's killing whom South Korea identified as a member of Pyongyang’s State Security Department, the organ responsible for the secret police.
O was with Aisyah on Feb. 13 and swiftly departed Malaysia by air after the hit. He is believed to be safely back in North Korea.
O majored in Indonesian at an Indonesian university and served as a diplomat at the North Korean Embassy in Jakarta, the source said.
Aisyah said she became acquainted with James through a Malaysian man when she was working in Indonesia’s Batam Island.
A friend of Aisyah told The Asahi Shimbun that she told him she “was asked to appear in a prank video in January.”
During her trial, the focus will be whether or not she intended to kill Kim. Murder is a capital offense in Malaysia.
Doan Thi Huong, a 28-year-old Vietnamese woman who was arrested with Aisyah in connection with the slaying, also visited Cambodia in mid-January, according to her own Facebook posts.
Authorities suspect that she, too, was involved in similar rehearsals to ensure she was prepared to play her role.
(This article was written by Masanobu Furuya in Jakarta and Yuji Endo in Kuala Lumpur.)
P!
Why not just indict Little Kim and demand his extradition?
L
How much practice do you need for a prank?
A valid question, that indicates that they knew that it was something else.
link the the earlier thread: EXPOSE: More suspects involved in plot to kill Jong-nam?http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3535846/posts
I wonder what protected her from the effects of the VX she used in the attack?
A few milligrams of the stuff is deadly, and can be absorbed through the skin.
Dr Bruce Goldberger, a toxicologist at the University of Florida, said it was possible that the two women had been given an antidote ahead of carrying out the killing, which would have spared them the worst effects of the toxin.
“I'm intrigued that these two alleged assassins suffered no ill effect from exposure to VX,” Dr Goldberger said. “It is possible that both of these women were given the antidote.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/24/malaysia-says-vx-nerve-agent-used-murder-kim-jong-nam/
An individual who has received a known nerve-agent exposure, or who exhibits definite signs or symptoms of nerve-agent exposure should immediately be given the antidotes atropine and pralidoxime (2-PAM), as well an injected sedative/antiepileptic such as diazepam. In several nations the nerve agent antidotes are issued for military personnel in the form of an autoinjector such as the United States military Mark I NAAK.
Atropine blocks a subset of acetylcholine receptors known as muscarinic acetylcholine receptors (mAchRs), so that the buildup of acetylcholine produced by loss of the acetylcholinesterase function has a reduced effect on their target receptor. Pralidoxime (2-PAM) reactivates the acetylcholinesterase enzyme (AChE), thus reversing the effects of VX. VX and other organophosphates block AChE activity by binding to the active site of the enzyme. The phosphate group on VX is transferred from VX to AChE, which inactivates the enzyme and produces an inactive metabolite of VX. Pralidoxime removes this phosphate group.
However, if pralidoxime is not given soon enough, the inactivated enzyme will “age”, resulting in a much stronger AChE-phosphate binding, that pralidoxime cannot reverse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)
side effects of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropine
and side effects of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pralidoxime
They must have developed this over years.
Practice makes perfect.
I’m curious how they found this many rehearsals? Or was it through interrogation?
I think that the two of them thought they were involved in a kidnapping, not a murder. Kidnapping of rich Chinese tycoons in that part of the world is endemic. They may have thought that their job was to drug the guy, then let the goons in the cafe across from the reception area grab him.
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