Indonesia's foreign ministry said it's trying to verify the nationality of a woman with an Indonesian passport who was arrested in Malaysia today for suspected involvement in the killing of the North Korean leader's half brother.
Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, director of Indonesian Citizen Protection at the Foreign Ministry, said today that millions of Indonesians work in neighboring Malaysia and the passport seized by Malaysian police could have been lost or stolen.
"We have been trying to verify those reports with our embassy in Malaysia as soon as we heard about that, because this is not the first time that an Indonesian reportedly committed a crime just based on the bearer of an Indonesian passport, but then the bearer was not an Indonesian citizen," he said.
Malaysian police have now arrested two women in the death of Kim Jong Nam, who was reportedly poisoned this week by a pair of female assassins as he waited for a flight in Malaysia.
They said the passport with the woman arrested Thursday was in the name of Siti Aishah, 25, from Serang in Banten province which neighbors the Indonesian capital Jakarta. The woman arrested on Wednesday had Vietnamese travel documents bearing the name Doan Thi Huong, 28.
Several million Indonesians work in Malaysia as maids and construction and plantation workers.
Agents that recruit workers in Indonesia often provide them with altered or forged documents. "Aishah" is a spelling typically used in Malaysia whereas "Aisyah" is commonly used in Indonesia.
Investigators in Malaysia are trying to shed light on the death of Kim, which has set off set off waves of speculation over whether North Korea dispatched a hit squad to kill a man known for his drinking, gambling and complicated family life.
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