REPRIEVE

Woman Accused of Killing Kim Jong Nam Escapes Death Penalty

She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

The Vietnamese woman accused of killing Kim Jong Nam—the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—has pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of causing hurt by potentially deadly means. She would have faced the death penalty if she'd been found guilty of murder. The BBC reports that the Malaysian court sentenced Doan Thi Huong to three years and four months in jail, starting from her arrest in February 2017, and she could be free by May. Kim was assassinated at Kuala Lumpur Airport in 2017 with a toxic nerve agent. Both suspects have insisted they are innocent and claimed they were tricked into carrying out the killing—which involved smearing a lethal nerve agent on the victim’s face—because they believed they were part of a reality-TV prank. Huong’s stepmother Nguyen Thi Vy said she was “very happy” with the sentence. Her Indonesian co-defendant, Siti Aisyah, was unexpectedly freed last month.

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