Vietnamese national Doan Thi Huong (C) arrives at the Shah Alam High Court on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur on Monday. Mohd Rasfan/ AFP

SHAH ALAM: A Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating the North Korean leader's half-brother was sentenced to three years and four months in jail after accepting a lesser charge on Monday and will likely be freed in May, her lawyer said.

“In the first week of May, she will go home,” lawyer Hisyam Teh Poh Teik told reporters in the Shah Alam High Court, outside Kuala Lumpur.

Doan Thi Huong, originally charged with murder, had pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of causing injury, and the judge sentenced her to three years and four months in jail from her arrest in February, 2017.

Hisyam said that with sentence reductions that are usually applied in the Malaysian system, she would be freed at the start of next month.

Agence France-Presse