Malaysian PM says Kim probe will be objective

“Police released him half an hour later after we brought and showed them his documents”, the spokesman said.

Mr Khalid said that the women had clearly been “instructed to clean their hands” and that they knew that the substance they were using was toxic.

However, North Korean officials say they will not recognise the results.

“The envoy’s comment on South Korea is a preposterous claim that is not even worth countering”, said the official.

The embassy official and the airline employee are among three North Koreans believed to still be at large in Malaysia.

The detained Indonesian woman has said she was duped into playing a role in the killing, believing she was part of a television comedy prank.

Mr Khalid said he believed four of the eight North Koreans they were looking for, were already back in the North Korean capital Pyongyang.

Those women are in police custody, along with a taxi driver and another man – but authorities have also said they want to speak to four North Korean men about the case.

“They’ve been called in for assistance”.

Malaysia is one of the few countries that maintains ties with reclusive North Korea, and the dispute could further isolate the impoverished state.

Police Deputy Inspector General Noor Rashid Ibrahim said on Sunday that Malaysia would give family members two weeks to claim the body.

He also said the pair had carried out “practice runs” at shopping malls in KL before carrying out the act on Jong-nam.

China Press reported that Doan Thi Huong, a 28-year-old woman with a Vietnamese passport, first met the man three months ago in Malaysia.

But Malaysia rejected the request, saying the remains must stay in the morgue until a family member comes forward to identify them with a DNA sample.

The spat began shortly after Mr Kim’s death, when North Korea demanded that Malaysia hand over his body to them, and tried to prevent a post mortem.

North Korean heir-apparent Kim Jong Nam takes a look around as he boards a plane upon his deportation from Japan at Tokyo’s Narita global airport May 4, 2001. It’s now North Korea’s chief supplier of food, fuel and weapons.

South Korean Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo said this week that eight North Koreans were involved in the case and that the apparent assassination fit a long a history of North Korean terrorist attacks overseas and executions of officials considered a threat to the country’s leader.

1968: Commandos, dressed as SK military, attempt to assassinate President Park Chung-hee. Suspected to be NK agents.

A toxicology report should be released between one and two weeks after the post-mortem, the health minister has said on different occasions, which means there could be more detail about the kind of poison used as early as Wednesday. There were reports that the man had been attacked with a poison needle.