The North Korean suspect questioned in connection with the death of Kim Jong-nam has said he was the victim of a conspiracy by the Malaysian authorities.<\/p>\n
Ri Jong Chol said his detention was a “plot” to “damage the honour of the republic”, Reuters news agency reports.<\/p>\n
He made the comments outside the North Korea embassy in Beijing after he was deported from Malaysia on Friday.<\/p>\n
Ri Jong Chol was released from police custody due to insufficient evidence.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters early on Saturday, he accused Malaysian investigators of using coercion in an attempt to extract a confession.<\/p>\n
“If I just accept everything, they will make arrangements for a good life in Malaysia,” Ri Jong Chol said, adding: “This is when I realised that it was a trap. It was a trap to bring down the reputation of my country.”<\/p>\n
When questioned about reports of a car discovered near the airport said to be registered in his name, he said: “It was in my car garage. Malaysian police accepted this too.”<\/p>\n
Ri Jong Chol admitted to investigators that he was an expert in chemistry, but said that he worked in Malaysia “importing ingredients needed for soap”.<\/p>\n
Malaysian authorities are continuing their investigation into the death of Mr Kim, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who was killed at an airport in the country’s capital, Kuala Lumpur nearly three weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Ri Jong Chol, who said he was not at the airport on the day of the incident, was the only North Korean held in connection with the death.<\/p>\n
Malaysia is seeking to question several North Koreans, including an embassy official.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The North Korean suspect questioned in connection with the death of Kim Jong-nam has said he was the victim of a conspiracy by the Malaysian authorities. Ri Jong Chol said his detention was a “plot” to “damage the honour of the republic”, Reuters news agency reports. He made the comments outside the North Korea embassy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=298860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=298860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=298860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=298860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}