Royal Malaysia Police/Reuters
The two women accused of killing the North Korean leader’s estranged half-brother in a brazen nerve-agent attack have been charged with murder by Malaysian authorities. Official said the women—one Vietnamese and one Indonesian—have maintained they thought they were taking part in a reality-television prank when they smeared VX on Kim Jong Nam’s face at Kuala Lumpur’s airport on Feb. 13. The pair arrived in court in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday guarded by special forces carrying machine guns. Kim Jong Nam’s death has sparked a tense diplomatic spat, with North Korea suspected of involvement in the assassination. After Malaysian authorities accused a North Korean diplomat of helping to carry out the murder, North Korea claimed Malaysia was working with South Korea in a conspiracy against authorities in the Hermit Kingdom. A North Korean delegation arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday in a bid to claim Kim Jong Nam’s body, though the North Korean government has yet to officially identify the deceased as Kim Jong Nam.