Witness at Malaysia trial says 4 more suspects in Kim murder

A Malaysian police officer testified Thursday that the two women on trial in the murder of the estranged half brother of North Korea's leader were seen on airport security videos with two men believed to have provided the VX nerve agent used to kill him.

A courtroom sketch by artist Su Lin shows Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, right, and Indonesian Siti Aisyah, third from right, during their hearing at the court house in Shah Alam outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017. (Su Lin via AP Photo)

Videos presented in court showed Vietnamese suspect Doan Thi Huong walking in the airport with a man wearing a baseball cap. Separately, Indonesian suspect Siti Aisyah was seen meeting with another man also wearing a cap at an airport cafe just before the attack was carried out in a crowded departure terminal of the Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb. 13.

The faces of the men can't be seen clearly.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah is escorted by police after the hearing at the Shah Alam court house in Shah Alam outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017.  (AP Photo/Sadiq Asyraf)

Chief investigating officer Wan Azirul Nizam Che Wan Aziz identified the men as only Mr. Y and Mr. Chang.

He testified that the two men were believed to have smeared liquid on the women's hands before the pair smeared it on Kim Jong Nam's face.

Wan Azirul said the two men are among four people at large whom prosecutors accuse of having the common intention with the two women to murder Kim.

Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, center, is escorted by police officers as she arrives for a court hearing at Shah Alam court house in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017.  (AP Photo/Sadiq Asyraf)

He named the two other at-large suspects as James, the suspected recruiter of Aisyah, and Hanamori, who is nicknamed grandpa or uncle and is suspected of giving directions to Mr. Y.

No further details about those four suspects were disclosed in open court, though Prosecutor Wan Shaharuddin Wan Ladin said outside court the four are believed to be North Koreans.

Huong and Aisyah are the only two suspects detained in the brazen assassination of Kim, an outcast from North Korea's ruling family who lived abroad in virtual exile for years. Both women have pleaded not guilty to murder charges that carry mandatory death sentences if they are convicted.

Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, center, is escorted by police officers as she arrives for a court hearing at Shah Alam court house in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017. Security camera videos showed Wednesday Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half brother of North Korea's leader, being attacked at a Malaysian airport and the two suspects, including Doan. (AP Photo/Sadiq Asyraf)

Their defense lawyers have said Huong and Aisyah were duped by suspected North Korean agents into believing they were playing a harmless prank for a TV show. Prosecutors however, contend the women knew they were handling poison.

Security videos presented at the trial Wednesday showed the women hurrying off to separate washrooms after the alleged attack on Kim, with their hands held away from their bodies as if to avoid contact. Experts have testified that VX can be safely removed by careful hand-washing within 15 minutes of exposure.

A Royal Malaysian Police officer stands guard at Shah Alam court house where Kim Jong Nam murder trial is held in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017. Security camera videos showed Wednesday Kim, the estranged half brother of North Korea's leader, being attacked at a Malaysian airport and the two suspects hurrying away afterward have been presented at their murder trial. (AP Photo/Sadiq Asyraf)

Aisyah's lawyer, Gooi Soon Seng, has told reporters previously that she was recruited in early January by a North Korean man known just as James to star in what he said were video prank shows. The lawyer said James had Aisyah go to malls, hotels and airports and rub oil or pepper sauce on strangers which he would film on his phone, and paid Aisyah between $100 and $200 for each prank.

James later introduced Aisyah to a man called Chang, who said he was the producer of Chinese video prank shows. On the day of Kim's death, Chang had pointed Kim out to Aisyah as the next target and put the substance in her hand, the lawyer has said.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah, center, is escorted by police officers as she arrives for a court hearing at Shah Alam court house in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Sadiq Asyraf)

Police say Chang was actually Hong Song Hac, one of four North Korean suspects who left Malaysia on the day of the killing, while James was Ri Ji U, one of three other North Koreans who hid inside their country's embassy in Kuala Lumpur to avoid questioning. Those three were later allowed to fly home in exchange for nine Malaysians who were allowed to leave Pyongyang in a deal easing a diplomatic standoff that brought relations between the two countries to historic lows.

Malaysia has never directly accused North Korea, but South Korea's spy agency has said the attack was part of a five-year plot by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to kill a brother he reportedly never met. Kim Jong Nam was not thought to be seeking influence over his younger brother but had spoken out publicly against his family's dynastic rule.

The trial is to resume on Oct. 24 with a visit to the crime scene at the airport.

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump returns to his hush money trial Tuesday facing a threat of jail time for additional gag order violations as prosecutors gear up to summon big-name witnesses including porn actor Stormy Daniels.

An attorney for Daniels, Clark Brewster, told The Associated Press that the porn actor, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is “likely” to be called as a witness in the trial on Tuesday. Trump said earlier Tuesday that he was “recently told” who the witness would be on Tuesday and complained he should’ve been given more notice.

In the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal fixer, Michael Cohen, paid Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about what she says was an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Trump at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in July 2006. Trump denies having sex with Daniels.

Daniels' testimony, even if sanitized for a courtroom setting and stripped of tell-all details, is by far the most-awaited spectacle in a trial that has toggled back and forth between tabloidesque elements and dry recordkeeping details. Her turn on the witness stand will represent a remarkable moment legally and politically, with courtroom testimony from an adult film performer about an intimidate encounter she says had with Trump adding to the long line of historic firsts in this case.

Trump and his campaign were reeling from the Oct. 7, 2016, publication of the never-before-seen 2005 “Access Hollywood” footage in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitals without their permission. He spoke with Cohen and Hope Hicks, his campaign’s press secretary, by phone the next day as they sought to limit damage from the tape and keep his alleged affairs out of the press.

Cohen paid Daniels after her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, indicated she was willing to make on-the-record statements to the National Enquirer or on television confirming a sexual encounter with Trump. National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard alerted publisher David Pecker and then, at Pecker’s direction, told Cohen that Daniels was agitating to go public with her claims, prosecutors said. Daniels had previously sought to sell her story to another celebrity gossip magazine, Life & Style, in 2011.

The jury on Monday heard from two witnesses, including a former Trump Organization controller, who provided a mechanical but vital recitation of how the company reimbursed payments that were allegedly meant to suppress embarrassing stories from surfacing and then logged them as legal expenses in a manner that Manhattan prosecutors say broke the law.

The testimony from Jeffrey McConney yielded an important building block for prosecutors trying to pull back the curtain on what they say was a corporate records cover-up of transactions designed to protect Trump’s Republican presidential bid during a pivotal stretch of the race. It focused on a $130,000 payment from Cohen to Daniels and the subsequent reimbursement Cohen received.

McConney and another witness testified that the reimbursement checks were drawn from Trump’s personal account. Yet even as jurors witnessed the checks and other documentary evidence, prosecutors did not elicit testimony Monday showing that Trump dictated that the payments would be logged as legal expenses, a designation that prosecutors contend was intentionally deceptive.

McConney acknowledged during cross-examination that Trump never asked him to log the reimbursements as legal expenses or discussed the matter with him at all. Another witness, Deborah Tarasoff, a Trump Organization accounts payable supervisor, said under questioning that she did not get permission to cut the checks in question from Trump himself.

“You never had any reason to believe that President Trump was hiding anything or anything like that?” Trump attorney Todd Blanche asked.

”Correct,” Tarasoff replied.

The testimony followed a stern warning from Judge Juan M. Merchan that additional violations of a gag order barring Trump from inflammatory out-of-court comments about witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case could result in jail time.

The $1,000 fine imposed Monday marks the second time since the trial began last month that Trump has been sanctioned for violating the gag order. He was fined $9,000 last week, $1,000 for each of nine violations.

“It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent. Therefore going forward, this court will have to consider a jail sanction,” Merchan said before jurors were brought into the courtroom. Trump’s statements, the judge added, “threaten to interfere with the fair administration of justice and constitute a direct attack on the rule of law. I cannot allow that to continue.”

Trump sat forward in his seat, glowering at the judge as he handed down the ruling. When the judge finished speaking, Trump shook his head twice and crossed his arms.

Yet even as Merchan warned of jail time in his most pointed and direct admonition, he also made clear his reservations about a step that he described as a “last resort.”

“The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Merchan said. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president as well. There are many reasons why incarceration is truly a last resort for me. To take that step would be disruptive to these proceedings.”

The latest violation stems from an April 22 interview with television channel Real America’s Voice in which Trump criticized the speed at which the jury was picked and claimed, without evidence, that it was stacked with Democrats.

Prosecutors are continuing to build toward their star witness, Cohen, who pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money payments. He is expected to undergo a bruising cross-examination from defense attorneys seeking to undermine his credibility with jurors.

Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments but has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing. The trial is the first of his four criminal cases to come before a jury.

Tucker reported from Washington.

FILE - Stormy Daniels arrives at an event in Berlin, on Oct. 11, 2018. Witness testimony in Donald Trump's hush money trial is set to move forward again and all eyes are on who will be called next. An attorney for Stormy Daniels says the porn actor is expected to appear as a witness on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

Former President Donald Trump attends his trial at the Manhattan Criminal court, Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)

Former President Donald Trump attends his trial at the Manhattan Criminal court, Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)

Former President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media before departing Manhattan criminal court, Monday, May 6, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, Pool)