Coma student’s parents denounce Pyongyang ‘brutality’
Otto Warmbier being treated in US hospital after his release from prison in North Korea
AN American college student who was released from a North Korean prison is in a coma and undergoing treatment at an Ohio hospital, where he was taken shortly after arriving on US soil.
A plane carrying Otto Warmbier, 22, who is from Ohio, landed in Cincinnati late on Tuesday night.
He had been serving a 15-year prison term with hard labour in North Korea for alleged anti-state acts. His parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, said they were told he had been in a coma since his trial in March last year, when he was last seen in public.
“We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalised and terrorised by the pariah regime,” they said.
In his hometown of Wyoming, just outside Cincinnati, residents tied blue and white ribbons, the local high school’s colours, to trees to mark Mr Warmbier’s return.
“I think we’re very excited yet very prayerful about what is happening because we’ve heard he is in a coma,” said resident Amy Mayer. “So I think that people are trying to be supportive of the family and let the family know that we are with them.”
Securing Mr Warmbier’s release “was a big priority” for President Donald Trump, who worked “very hard and very closely” with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
The detention of Americans, often sentenced to draconian prison sentences for seemingly small offences in the totalitarian state, has compounded tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.
Mr Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial last year. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour for subversion after he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner.
A White House official said Mr Trump had instructed Mr Tillerson to take all appropriate measures to secure the release of Americans held in North Korea. Three remain in custody.
The US has accused Pyongyang of using detainees as political pawns, while the North accuses Washington and South Korea of sending spies to overthrow its government.
Mr Warmbier’s release came during a visit to North Korea by former NBA star Dennis Rodman, one of few people to have met both its leader, Kim Jongun, and Mr Trump, who was his boss on the US television show Celebrity Apprentice.