Tag Archives: Police

U.N. votes to close, replace Haiti peacekeeping mission

U.N. peacekeepers walk along a street during a patrol with Haitian national police officers and members of UNPOL (United Nations Police) in the neighborhood of Cite Soleil, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, March 3, 2017. Picture taken March 3, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

By Rodrigo Campos

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Thursday to end its 13-year-long peacekeeping mission in Haiti and replace it with a smaller police, which would be drawn down after two years as the country boosts its own force.

The peacekeeping mission, one of the longest running in the world and known as MINUSTAH, has been dogged by controversies, including the introduction of cholera to the island and sexual abuse claims.

The 15-member Security Council acknowledged the completion of Haiti’s presidential election, along with the inauguration of its new president, as a “major milestone towards stabilization” in the Caribbean country.

“What we now need is a newly configured mission which is focused on the rule of law and human rights in Haiti,” British U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said on his way into the meeting.

“Peacekeepers do fantastic work but they are very expensive and they should be used only when needed,” Rycroft said. “We strongly support the ending of this mission turning it into something else. And I think we’ll see the same thing elsewhere.”

The shutdown of the $346 million mission, recommended by U.N. chief Antonio Guterres, comes as the United States looks to cut its funding of U.N. peacekeeping. Washington is the largest contributor, paying 28.5 percent of the total budget.

There are 2,342 U.N. troops in Haiti, who will withdraw over the coming six months. The new mission will be established for an initial six months, from Oct. 16, 2017 to April 15, 2018, and is projected to exit two years after its establishment.

Lucien Jura, a spokesman for Haitian President Jovenel Moise, paid tribute to the U.N. mission.

“The U.N. has held our hands to help us through very difficult steps, but we cannot indefinitely depend on them for the country’s security and stability,” he said.

U.N. peacekeepers were deployed to Haiti in 2004 when a rebellion led to the ouster and exile of then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It is the only U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Americas.

Haiti suffered a two-year political crisis until the recent election and inauguration of Moise as president. It has suffered major natural disasters, including an earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Matthew last year. But the impoverished Caribbean country has not had an armed conflict in years.

U.N. peacekeepers have been accused of sexual abuse and blamed for the cholera outbreak. Haiti was free of cholera until 2010, when peacekeepers dumped infected sewage into a river.

The United Nations does not accept legal responsibility for the outbreak of the disease, which causes uncontrollable diarrhea. Some 9,300 people have died and more than 800,000 sickened due to cholera and Haiti’s government believes the United Nations still has work to do on it.

“The U.N. promised to help eradicate the disease in the country and assist families who lost their loved ones. We expect the U.N. to fulfill its commitments,” said Moise spokesman Jura.

(Additional reporting by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and James Dalgleish)

United won’t use police to remove overbooked passengers

Community member protests the treatment of Dr. David Dao, who was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight on Sunday by the Chicago Aviation Police, at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois,

By Alana Wise and David Shepardson

NEW YORK (Reuters) – United Airlines will no longer use law enforcement officers to remove passengers from overbooked flights after global outrage erupted over a video showing a passenger dragged from one of its planes in Chicago.

“We’re not going to put a law enforcement official… to remove a booked, paid, seated passenger,” United Continental Holdings Inc Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz told ABC News on Wednesday morning. “We can’t do that.”

Munoz said the incident on Sunday resulted from a “system failure” that prevented employees from using “common sense” in the situation and that Dr. David Dao, whom security officers pulled by his hands from the cabin before takeoff, was not at fault.

An online petition calling for Munoz to step down as CEO had more than 45,000 signatures on Wednesday morning, but he told ABC that he had no plans to resign over the incident.

Shares of United Continental were about flat in morning trading. They had fallen as much as 4.4 percent on Tuesday.

The backlash from the incident resonated around the world, with social media users in the United States, China and Vietnam calling to boycott the No. 3 U.S. carrier by passenger traffic.[L8N1HK0L9]

On China’s Sina Weibo, #UnitedAirlinesforcespassengeroffplane was still pinned as one of the most talked-about topics on the microblogging site’s front page.

As of Tuesday, Dao was still in a Chicago hospital from injuries he sustained when airport security snatched him from his seat aboard United Flight 3411 to Louisville, Kentucky, his lawyer said.

“Currently, (Dao and his family) are focused only on Dr. Dao’s medical care and treatment,” Chicago-based lawyer Stephen Golan said in a statement on Tuesday.

Video recorded by fellow passengers showed Dao on his back as security officers dragged him from the cabin of the parked plane. Other footage shows him, bloodied and disheveled, returning to the cabin and repeating: “Just kill me. Kill me,” and “I have to go home.”

Much of the social media uproar stemmed from Dao’s status as a paying passenger who was being removed to make room for additional crew members on the overbooked flight.

In the ABC interview, Munoz apologized profusely to Dao, his family, passengers and United customers.

“This can never, will never happen again,” he said.

(Reporting by Alana Wise in New York; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Angela Moon in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

‘Fight to the death’: snipers slow down Iraqi forces in Mosul’s Old City

A machine gun is seen on the floor next to a map drawn to show distances, on the wall of a sniper's nest in a building controlled by Iraqi forces fighting the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq, April 6, 2017. REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares

By Ulf Laessing

MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) – Taking aim through a telescope on his rifle, the police officer opened fire on an Islamic State sniper from the top floor of a tower in Mosul before quickly pulling back to take cover.

“Hit the sniper at the mosque,” his commanding officer told him as he aimed at his target in the Old City, one of the only districts still in the militants’ hands in their last major urban stronghold in Iraq.

Iraqi forces are trying to advance through the narrow, maze-like streets toward the symbolic al-Nuri mosque, where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate in 2014.

But progress is much slower than in the early phases of the campaign, during which government forces took nearly three quarters of the city within five months.

The front line has hardly moved in the past three weeks, and the militants, along with roughly 400,000 residents, are trapped inside a ring of Iraq troops.

The soldiers expect the militants to fight to the death.

“Daesh fighters are resisting on a professional level because they have no escape routes left,” said a second policeman Hussein Qassem, using an Arabic acronym for the militants.

“They are resisting until they are killed. God willing we will not leave any Islamic State fighters. We will fight till the end.”

But advances are hard-won and fragile.

On Thursday, members of the Federal Police co-leading the advance said it was not safe to go to Mosul museum, which they had retaken three weeks ago.

“There is a lot of sniper activity over there behind that building,” a third police officer said, pointing toward an area behind the museum about 100 meters (yards) away.

Just days ago, they had taken journalists to the museum, and other areas closer to the front line.

“It’s now only about snipers and car bombs,” said an officer deployed from a Baghdad unit, as gunfire rang out and soldiers took cover among troop carriers and Humvees behind piles of sand. “They don’t have many snipers but they move around.”

They now face an extra danger.

Late on Thursday, the militants shot down a helicopter providing air support for the Federal Police, the first aircraft downed by Islamic State over Mosul since the start of the U.S.-backed offensive in October.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

Wave of attacks across southern Thailand after new constitution signed

Military personnel stand next to a site of an attack at Yaring district, in the troubled southern province of Pattani, Thailand. REUTERS/Surapan Boonthanom

By Panarat Thepgumpanat and Patpicha Tanakasempipat

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Bomb blasts were among 23 coordinated attacks that rocked Muslim-majority southern Thailand early on Friday, a security officer said, just hours after King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a new constitution as a step towards ending military rule.

Police reported no casualties in the region, site of a recent upsurge in a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency that had voted the most strongly against the new constitution at a referendum last year.

“The incidents are aimed to create disturbances,” Pramote Prom-in, a spokesman for regional security forces, told Reuters. “They want to destroy the government’s credibility and create fear among people.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility and security forces said they could not yet identify which insurgent group was to blame.

The attacks were scattered across 19 districts in the southern region, grouping the provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat, and the nearby province of Songkhla, he said.

A large number of co-ordinated attacks in the region is unusual. Complete details were not immediately available, but they ranged from bomb explosions at 52 electricity poles, triggering widespread regional power cuts, to several tire-burning incidents, Pramote added.

On Thursday, Thailand’s king signed into law a military-backed constitution, an essential step towards an election the ruling junta has promised will restore democracy after the 12th successful coup in little over 80 years.

The new constitution is the Southeast Asian country’s 20th since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932, and critics say it will still give the generals a powerful say over Thai politics for years, if not decades.

Voters in the most heavily Muslim parts of Thailand were among the few to reject the draft constitution in last year’s referendum.

The timing of the attacks just hours after the constitution was proclaimed was curious, said Defence Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, but there was no conclusive evidence it was a motive.

A Malay Muslim separatist insurgency in the three southern provinces has killed more than 6,500 since it escalated in 2004, independent monitoring group Deep South Watch says.

On Monday, police reported what they called the biggest insurgent attack in the south in years, when about 30 people fired more than 500 shots into a police booth.

In February, the government of the Buddhist-majority country struck a deal with MARA Patani, an umbrella group that says it speaks for the insurgents, but other separatists rejected it.

(Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat and Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Writing by Matthew Tostevin; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Sporadic violence in Johannesburg as South Africans protest against Zuma

Demonstrators carry banners as they take part in a protest calling for the removal of South Africa's President Jacob Zuma in Johannesburg. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings

By Ed Stoddard and TJ Strydom

PRETORIA/JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Sporadic violence broke out in Johannesburg as more than 50,000 people marched in South African cities to protest against President Jacob Zuma on Friday, demanding he quit after a cabinet reshuffle triggered the latest crisis of his presidency.

Zuma’s sacking of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in the reshuffle last Thursday has outraged allies and opponents alike, undermined his authority and caused rifts in the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has governed South Africa since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.

Fitch on Friday followed S&P Global Ratings and downgraded South Africa to “junk”, citing Gordhan’s dismissal as one reason. S&P had issued its downgrade on South Africa in an unscheduled review on Monday.

In Johannesburg, police “fired rubber bullets at protesters who were attacking other protesters with stones. Four protesters sustained minor injuries,” Johannesburg Metro Police Department spokesman Wayne Minaar said. Some ANC backers were trying to breach a cordon separating them from members of the opposition Democratic Alliance.

Elsewhere in the city, the marches were peaceful.

Mmusi Maimane, leader of the DA, which had called for the marches, held a rally of more than 10,000 people that was calm, a few streets from the scene of the violence. Some held placards saying “Fire Zuma”.

“Our country is in crisis,” Maimane, who wore a bullet-proof vest under his shirt after the DA said it had received threats to the protest’s leaders, said. “The time to act is now.”

“We are unhappy about his leadership because he does not seem to care about the people,” said Syriana Maesela, 65, a retiree carrying a South African flag. “The irony is I did the same thing in 1976 when I was a student. I also marched then,” she said, referring protests against the apartheid regime.

About 10,000 gathered in a field outside the Union Buildings, the site of Zuma’s offices in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital.

A PROTEST SURVIVOR

Zuma, 74, has faced protests in the past. The ANC on Wednesday rejected calls for Zuma to quit, and analysts doubted marches would shake the president. It said its members in parliament would vote against a motion of no confidence in Zuma on April 18, a key rallying call for the marchers on Friday.

And Zuma supporters also gathered. About 300 camouflage-clad veterans of the ANC’s now-disbanded Umkhonto we Sizwe (MKMVA ) military wing ringed the party’s Luthuli House building in downtown Johannesburg, mounting mock parades and singing in support of the president.

Some clad in the yellow, green and gold colors of the ANC also danced, waving placards emblazoned with the words: “I’m prepared to die for my ANC” and “Hands off our President”.

“They are free to march freely but not to try and remove a government that was elected democratically,” said Kebby Maphatsoe, the head of the veterans group and also Deputy Minister of Defence and Military Veterans.

“Let them wait for 2019 and we will take them on, but the ones that want to remove it undemocratically, MKMVA will rise up to the occasion.”

The rand <ZAR=D3> weakened slightly after Fitch’s announcement. The currency has tumbled more than 11 percent since March 27, when Zuma ordered Gordhan to return home from overseas talks with investors, days before firing him.

“The bottom line is we are paying for the consequences of the political regime that has lost direction,” said Gary van Staden, analyst at NKC African Economics. The downgrade will add to pressure on Zuma to leave office, he said.

Capital Economics Africa economist John Ashbourne said in a note that although there was mounting opposition to Zuma “we think that the most likely outcome is still that Mr. Zuma will decide the timing of his own exit.”

PARLIAMENT

In Cape Town, motorists hooted in support of the march as about 10,000 people gathered at various points in the city, including outside parliament.

“It’s not simply a question of his removal. It is about the renewal of the ANC and democracy,” said Gerrald Ray, 56, a business strategist.

About 4,000 people were also marching in the coastal city of Durban, the main city in the KwaZulu Natal province, an ANC stronghold.

“We need to unite and fight this corruption,” said Michelle Fortune, 48, a manager who declined to say where she works. She wore a South African flag bandana.

Meanwhile, members of the ANC Youth League gathered in downtown Durban, singing “Awuleth’umshini wami”, a song popularized by Zuma, which means “bring me my gun” and held placards supporting the president.

(Additional reporting by Marius Bosch, Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo, Nqobile Dludla and Tanisha Heiberg in Johannesburg, Wendell Roelf in Cape Town and Rogan Ward in Durban; Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Larry King)

Activists fear federal review of U.S. police agreements could imperil reforms

FILE PHOTO: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, U.S., March 2, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo

By Joseph Ax

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Trump administration’s decision to review federal agreements with troubled police departments nationwide could imperil ongoing reform efforts, particularly in Baltimore and Chicago, civil rights advocates said on Tuesday, even as city officials vowed to continue pursuing improvements.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ memorandum ordering the review endangers one of the key legacies of former President Barack Obama, whose Department of Justice reached more than a dozen agreements with police departments over constitutional abuses.

Many of the Obama-era investigations took place amid a string of high-profile police killings of minorities that sparked protests across the country.

Sessions’ order will likely have its most immediate impact on Baltimore and Chicago, both of which have been negotiating reform settlements with the department since before Donald Trump became president in January.

The memo was released on Monday, the same day that the Justice Department asked a judge to delay an agreement to revamp Baltimore’s beleaguered department for three months just days before the judge was set to approve the deal.

Officials in both cities said they would press ahead with reforms despite the memo. But advocates said the review could undermine those efforts and suggests the Justice Department under Sessions will not undertake future civil rights investigations.

“He’s talking about the federal government turning its back on a pattern and practice of racialized policing that goes back decades in this country,” said Jeffrey Robinson, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “To suggest that the government should just leave it to local police departments is just frightening.”

Police unions, however, have expressed frustration with some of the court-approved settlements, known as consent decrees, and they welcomed the shift in policy.

“From a rank-and-file police officer’s point of view, we’re very happy,” said Bill Johnson, head of the National Association of Police Officers. “These agencies have come under a very heavy hand from the Department of Justice.”

‘PUNCH TO THE GUT’

The Justice Department is authorized to investigate whether police departments engage in an unconstitutional “pattern and practice,” such as unnecessary force or racial profiling.

Under Obama, it probed two dozen departments and reached reform agreements with 15, more than either of his predecessors, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.

In Baltimore, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis called the move a “punch to the gut” at a Tuesday news conference.

Though he said reforms would proceed, Davis said the court-enforced agreement is important because it ensures implementation even if he and Mayor Catherine Pugh leave office.

But the head of the Baltimore police union, Lieutenant Gene Ryan, said the union should have more of a voice in the process.

“I want to meet with Donald Trump,” he said, according to the Baltimore Sun newspaper. “I want to tell him what’s really going on.”

In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson likewise said they remain committed to reforms despite Sessions’ order.

A former Obama administration official who oversaw federal police reforms at the Justice Department for six years, Christy Lopez, said the review leaves her most concerned about Chicago.

“I’ve never seen a city that cries out more for a consent decree than Chicago,” said Lopez, now a visiting law professor at Georgetown University.

A Chicago pastor and retired police officer, Richard Wooten, said activists would hold Emanuel and other city officials accountable to push reforms despite the Sessions order.

“This is a sad day, but on the flip side, we saw this coming,” Wooten said.

Trump has often decried Chicago’s rising murder rate, threatening in January to “send in the feds.”

It is not clear whether the Justice Department could secure changes to existing consent decrees, such as those governing police departments in Cleveland; Newark, New Jersey; Seattle; New Orleans; and Ferguson, Missouri. That would require approval from federal judges, some of whom have made clear they will not accept changes without good cause.

Some unions have chafed under consent decrees, calling them costly, ineffective and stigmatizing to officers. Sessions’ memo touched on that issue, saying the department should ensure police officers are not tarnished by the “misdeeds of individual bad actors.”

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which has advocated for police reform, said the government has only investigated “the worst offenders” – 25 departments out of some 18,000 since 2009.

Robinson, the ACLU lawyer, said his group and others would consider legal action to enforce agreements but warned that any retreat by the federal government would make it harder to monitor reforms.

“If the federal government is silent, it is sending a message to local police departments: do whatever you want and we will look the other way,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte and Ian Simpson in Washington, Timothy McLaughlin in Chicago and Tom James in Seattle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Messages show New York police surveillance of Black Lives Matter

People participate in a Black Lives Matter protest in front of Trump Tower in New York City, U.S. January 14, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

By Jonathan Allen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Documents released by the New York Police Department and published by a newspaper on Tuesday shed new light on how undercover officers surveilled organizers from the Black Lives Matter movement who were protesting police tactics.

The documents include brief internal messages between officers that track demonstrators’ movements during “die-in” protests at New York City’s Grand Central Terminal in 2014 and 2015, as well as photographs and a video of the protests.

They also include two photographs of text messages on the screen of an unknown person’s cellphone that appear to be instructions sent by organizers telling protesters where to gather.

“TONIGHT 8PM Die In & Community Convergence at Grand Central,” one of the messages reads in part.

A New York judge ordered the release of the documents in February after a protester, James Logue, successfully sued the NYPD under freedom of information laws, arguing that the police may have inappropriately interfered with the right to protest peacefully.

The city released the documents to Logue last month, and they were published on Tuesday by the Guardian. The NYPD did not respond to questions, although it has acknowledged its use of undercover officers in the protests.

David Thompson, a lawyer representing Logue, said he was concerned by the photographs of the two organizing text messages because they were shared among only a small group of people.

“So we think this means that at least one police officer managed to get him or herself into this core group of organizers and might still be there for all we know,” he said in an interview. “And that’s disturbing.”

Thompson said the police surveillance of the protesters and the retention of photographs of them without any publicly known evidence of unlawful activity by the protesters was wrong.

Several of the protests in 2014 and 2015 were prompted by outrage over the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man selling loose cigarettes on New York’s Staten Island who died shouting “I can’t breathe!” as a police officer’s arm gripped his neck.

Some legal experts said in interviews it was difficult to tell from the limited information released whether the police department broke court-ordered rules that govern how New York City can police political activity, but that the surveillance seemed disproportionate.

“A ‘sit-in’ is not the same as an act of violence, and the police should not be engaged in maximal surveillance for non-violent activity,” said Arthur Eisenberg, the New York Civil Liberties Union’s legal director.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Justice Department asks for 90 days to review agreement with Baltimore

A young boy greets police officers in riot gear during a 2005 march in Baltimore. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Monday asked a federal court for 90 days to review an agreement reached with Baltimore for the city to enact a series of police reforms in how officers use force and transport prisoners, court documents showed.

The city and justice department reached the agreement, known as a consent decree, in January, almost two years after the death of a black man, Freddie Gray, of injuries sustained while in police custody sparked a day of rioting and arson in the majority-black city. It also led to an investigation that found the city’s police routinely violated residents’ civil rights.

Gray, 25, died of injuries sustained in the back of a police van in April 2015. His was one of a series of high-profile deaths in U.S. cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to North Charleston, South Carolina, that sparked an intense debate about race and justice and fueled the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Justice Department needs the 90 days to review the agreement as it develops strategies to support law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S., lawyers for the department said in a motion filed in United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

“The Department has determined that permitting it more time to examine the consent decree proposed in this case in light of these initiatives will help ensure that the best result is achieved for the people of the City,” they wrote, asking for a hearing set for Thursday to be postponed until June.

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh opposes the request for an extension, she said in a statement.

“Much has been done to begin the process of building faith between the police department and the community it seeks to serve. Any interruption in moving forward may have the effect of eroding the trust that we are working hard to establish,” she said.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a memo also filed to the court that the Justice Department will review all consent decrees and other police reform agreements that are in place with more than a dozen cities.

The 227-page consent decree agreement in Baltimore was reached in the final days of the Obama administration. It was the result of months of negotiations after a federal report released in August found that the city’s 2,600-member police department routinely violated black residents’ civil rights with strip searches, by excessively using force and other means.

(This version of the story was refiled to add word “with” in headline)

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Michael Perry)

Connecticut may become first U.S. state to allow deadly police drones

By Barbara Goldberg

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Connecticut would become the first U.S. state to allow law enforcement agencies to use drones equipped with deadly weapons if a bill opposed by civil libertarians becomes law.

The legislation, approved overwhelmingly by the state legislature’s judiciary committee on Wednesday, would ban so-called weaponized drones in the state but exempts agencies involved in law enforcement. It now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

The legislation was introduced as a complete ban on weaponized drones but just before the committee vote it was amended to exclude police from the restriction.

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, was reviewing the proposal, “however in previous years he has not supported this concept,” spokesman Chris Collibee wrote in an email.

Civil libertarians and civil rights activists are lobbying to restore the bill to its original language before the full House vote.

“Data shows police force is disproportionately used on minority communities, and we believe that armed drones would be used in urban centers and on minority communities,” said David McGuire, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Connecticut.

“That’s not the kind of precedent we want to set here,” McGuire said of the prospect that Connecticut would become the first state to allow police to use lethally armed drones.

In 2015, North Dakota became the first state to permit law enforcement agencies to use armed drones but limited them to “less than lethal” weapons such as tear gas and pepper spray.

So far, 36 states have enacted laws restricting drones and an additional four states have adopted drone limits, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

If Connecticut’s Democratic-controlled House passes the bill it will move to the Senate, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans.

Representative William Tong, a Democrat from Stamford, nor Senator John Kissel, a Republican from Enfield, who are co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee, were not immediately available for comment.

(Editing by Frank McGurty and James Dalgleish)

North Korean murder suspects go home with victim’s body as Malaysia forced to swap

Hyon Kwang Song (R), the second secretary at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and Kim Uk Il, a North Korean state airline employee, arrive in Beijing intentional airport to board a flight returning to North Korea, in Beijing. Kyodo via REUTERS

By Rozanna Latiff and James Pearson

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Three North Koreans wanted for questioning over the murder of the estranged half-brother of their country’s leader returned home on Friday along with the body of victim Kim Jong Nam after Malaysia agreed a swap deal with the reclusive state.

Malaysian police investigating what U.S. and South Korean officials say was an assassination carried out by North Korean agents took statements from the three before they were allowed to leave the country.

“We have obtained whatever we want from them…They have assisted us and they have been allowed to leave,” police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told a news conference in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, saying there were no grounds to hold the men.

Kim Jong Nam, the elder half-brother of the North’s young, unpredictable leader Kim Jong Un, was killed at Kuala Lumpur’s airport on Feb. 13 in a bizarre assassination using VX nerve agent, a chemical so lethal the U.N. has listed it as a weapon of mass destruction.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the remains of a North Korean citizen killed in Malaysia were returned to the North via Beijing along with “relevant” North Korean citizens.

Malaysian authorities released Kim’s body on Thursday in a deal that secured the release of nine Malaysian citizens held in Pyongyang after a drawn out diplomatic spat.

Malaysian police had named eight North Koreans they wanted to question in the case, including the three given safe passage to leave.

Television footage obtained by Reuters from Japanese media showed Hyon Kwang Song, the second secretary at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, and Kim Uk Il, a North Korean state airline employee on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The police chief confirmed they were accompanied by compatriot Ri Ji U, also known as James, who had been hiding with them at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysian prosecutors have charged two women – an Indonesian and a Vietnamese – with killing Kim Jong Nam, but South Korean and U.S. officials had regarded them as pawns in an operation carried out by North Korean agents.

Kim Jong Nam, who had been living in exile in the Chinese territory of Macau for several years, survived an attempt on his life in 2012, according to South Korean lawmakers.

They say Kim Jong Un had issued a “standing order” for the assassination in order to consolidate his own power after the 2011 death of the father of both.

The other North Koreans named by Malaysian investigators are all back in North Korea.

Police believe four fled Malaysia on the same day as the murder and another was held for a week before being released due to insufficient evidence.

Angered by the probe, North Korea ordered a travel ban on Malaysians this month, trapping three diplomats and six family members – including four children – in Pyongyang.

Malaysia, which previously had friendly ties with the unpredictable nuclear-armed state, responded with a ban of its own, but was left with little option but to accede to the North’s demands for the return of the body and safe passage for the three nationals hiding in the embassy.

“CLEAR WINNER”

Malaysia will not snap diplomatic ties with North Korea following the row, Prime Minister Najib Razak said during an official visit to India, state news agency Bernama reported.

“We hope they don’t create a case like this again,” Najib told reporters in the southern city of Chennai. “It will harm the relationship between the two countries.”

On Thursday, Najib had announced the return of the body, but did not mention Kim by name.

“Following the completion of the autopsy on the deceased and receipt of a letter from his family requesting the remains be returned to North Korea, the coroner has approved the release of the body,” Najib said, adding that the murder investigation would continue but the travel ban on North Koreans was lifted.

North Korea has maintained that the dead man is not Kim Jong Nam, saying instead the body is that of Kim Chol, the name on the victim’s passport.

Malaysian police used a DNA sample to establish the victim was Kim Jong Nam. Police chief Khalid said the North Korean embassy had at first confirmed the identity, but changed its stance the next day.

The swap agreement brings to an end a diplomatic standoff that has lasted nearly seven weeks.

Both countries managed to “resolve issues arising from the death of a DPRK national,” a North Korean statement said on Thursday, referring to the country by the abbreviation of its official name.

“It is a win (for North Korea), clearly,” Andrei Lankov, North Korea expert at Seoul’s Kookmin University, said on the swap deal. “I presume the Malaysians decided not to get too involved in a remote country’s palace intrigues, and wanted their hostages back.”

SIMULTANEOUS TAKE-OFF

The nine Malaysians who had been trapped in Pyongyang arrived in Kuala Lumpur early on Friday on board a small Bombardier business jet operated by the Malaysian air force.

Pilot Hasrizan Kamis said the crew dressed in civilian clothes as a “precautionary step” for the mission.

The Plane Finder tracking website showed the Bombardier took off from Pyongyang at the same time the Malaysian Airlines flight MH360 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

Mohd Nor Azrin Md Zain, one of the returning diplomats, said it had been an anxious period but they “were not particularly harassed” by the North Korean authorities.

The episode, however, is likely to have cost North Korea one of its few friends.

“I think this relationship is going to go into cold storage for a very long time,” said former Malaysian diplomat Dennis Ignatius.

(Additional reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi, Joseph Sipalan, Emily Chow and Praveen Menon in KUALA LUMPUR and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)