An American
university student held prisoner in North Korea for 17 months died at a
Cincinnati hospital on Monday, just days after he was released from captivity
in a
coma, his family said.
Otto
Warmbier, 22, who was arrested in North Korea while visiting as a tourist, had
been described by doctors caring for him last week as having extensive brain
damage that left him in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness."
"Unfortunately,
the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North
Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we
experienced today," the family said in a statement after Warmbier's death
at 2:20 p.m. EDT (1820 GMT).
His family
has said that Warmbier lapsed into a coma in March 2016, shortly after he was
sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea.
Physicians
at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he died, said last
Thursday that Warmbier showed no sign of understanding language or awareness of
his surroundings, and had made no "purposeful movements or
behaviors," though he was breathing on his own.
There was no
immediate word from Warmbier's family on the cause of his death.
The
circumstances of his detention in North Korea and what medical treatment he may
have received there remained a mystery, but relatives have said his condition
suggested that he had been physically abused by his captors.
The
University of Virginia student and Ohio native was arrested, according to North
Korean media, for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan.
North Korea
released Warmbier last week and said he was being freed "on humanitarian
grounds."
The North
Korean mission to the United Nations was not available for comment on Monday.
U.S.
President Donald Trump issued a statement offering condolences to the Warmbier
family and denouncing "the brutality of the North Korean regime as we
mourn its latest victim."
The
president drew criticism in May when he said he would be "honored" to
meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
"If it
would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be
honored to do it," Trump said in the interview. "If it's under the,
again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that."
The
student's father, Fred Warmbier, said last week that his son had been
"brutalized and terrorized by the Pyongyang government and that the family
disbelieved North Korea's story that his son had fallen into a coma after
contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.
Doctors who
examined Otto Warmbier after his release said there was no sign of botulism in
his system.
Warmbier was
freed after the U.S. State Department's special envoy on North Korea, Joseph
Yun, traveled to Pyongyang and demanded the student's release on humanitarian
grounds, capping a flurry of secret diplomatic contacts, a U.S. official said
last week.
Tensions
between the United States and North Korea have been heightened by dozens of
North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since the beginning of
last year in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. Pyongyang has also
vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of
hitting the U.S. mainland.
Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson said the United States holds North Korea accountable for
Warmbier's "unjust imprisonment" and demanded the release of three
other U.S. citizens still held by Pyongyang - Korean-Americans Tony Kim, Kim
Dong Chul and Kim Hak Song.
Korean-American
missionary Kenneth Bae, who spent two years in North Korean captivity before
his release in 2014, expressed sadness at Warmbier's death, calling it an
"outrage."
"I
cannot understand what the Warmbier family is feeling right now. But I mourn
with them, and I pray for them," Bae said in a statement, noting three
Americans and a Canadian are currently detained in North Korea.
Young
Pioneer Tours, the group with which Warmbier traveled to North Korea, will no
longer be organizing tours for U.S. citizens to the isolated country, Troy
Collings, a company director, said in a statement.
Reuters*
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