One group said prosecutors must prove the dead person was Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, through conventional and scientific methods.
This is especially when the nation’s top law enforcement officer, IGP Khalid Abu Bakar declared on Friday that investigators had positively identified the dead man as Jong Nam.
Another said a Federal Court ruling in 2010 had pronounced that the identity of the dead person was not crucial in a murder trial.
All the prosecution needed to do was show that Siti Aisyah from Indonesia and Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam had killed a man.
They said this in response to confirmation by Khalid on Friday that the deceased was indeed Jong Nam.
“We have now established that Kim Chol is Kim Jong Nam. We have fulfilled the requirements of the law on his identification. For the safety of the witnesses, I am not going to tell you how it was done,” he told reporters.
Lawyer Manjeet Singh Dhillon said the dead man’s dental records was an excellent way to prove identity.
“A dentist who has treated the deceased could have produced Jong Nam’s jaw structures and X-ray records to investigators,” said Manjeet, who was a government lawyer earlier in his legal career.
Manjeet, however, said the prosecution had to reveal evidence like DNA findings and visual identification of the victims in preparation of their defence before the trial.
“At this juncture, the inspector-general of police is right to remain tight-lipped over whatever information investigators have obtained,” he said, adding that all evidence had to be presented by prosecutors for cross-examination and evaluation by the court.
Manjeet said it was also left to the public prosecutor’s discretion to amend, withdraw or reduce the charge to a less serious offence.
Another former deputy public prosecutor, Shamsul Sulaiman, said the victim could have been visually identified by a family member since the body was not in a state of decomposition.
“I believe a DNA testing would also have been done since earlier on there was a dispute if the dead person was Kim Chol or Kim Jong Nam.”
Shamsul said a dead person could also be identified based on the clothing worn, distinctive scars or tattoos, rings on a finger and fingerprints.
A senior lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he may be roped in to defend the two women, said the prosecution had to introduce evidence in court to prove the dead man was Jong Nam since Khalid had made a bold declaration.
“I am also aware of the Federal Court ruling (that identity is not crucial) but the trial court could be persuaded not to follow this ruling as the facts and circumstances are different.”
Lawyer K Ramu said in the case of Chian Swee Ong v Public Prosecutor, the apex court had ruled that failure to mention the name of the victim in the amended charge sheet was not fatal.
“The three-man bench held that the prosecution needed only to conclusively prove that the dead was a human being.”
In that case, Chian was first charged with the murder of Uzbekistan national Venera Ziatdinova but the name of the victim was removed later as no one came to identify the body or provide DNA identification.
Ramu said the prosecution in the case of Jong Nam could prove its case against the two women based on the acts captured by the closed circuit television cameras and evidence from independent eye-witnesses at the airport.
The lawyer said he had also appeared for a client who was convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder despite the victim not being identified.
Pyongyang is insisting that Jong Nam was Kim Chol, the name given on his passport, and that he could have died of a heart attack.
North Korean state media have so far described him “as an ordinary citizen”.
Police believe the two women smeared Jong Nam with a liquid containing VX, a nerve agent banned globally as a weapon of mass destruction.
According to the prosecutor’s charge sheet, both accused acted on Feb 13 in concert with four others still at large “with the same intention” to kill Kim Chol in the departure area of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2.
He was rushed to the Putrajaya Hospital, but died on the way.