Portman met with NKoreans to try to secure release
WASHINGTON — Sen. Rob Portman met secretly last December with North Korean’s delegation to the United Nations in an effort to gain the release of or at least get information about Otto Warmbier.
Warmbier, a Cincinnatiarea man was detained for nearly a year-and-a-half after being sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for stealing a poster, was released by North Korea last week in a vegetative state. He died Monday.
Portman, an Ohio Republican, will be attending the Wyoming, Ohio, resident’s memorial service Thursday morning, as will Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R–Cincinnati.
Wyoming officials say the celebration of life for Warmbier will be in the Wyoming High School auditorium. The service is open to the public, but not the media.
In a coffee meeting with constituents Wednesday, Portman spoke emotionally about Warmbier, mentioning that he secretly visited with the North Korean representatives in December that had been closely coordinated with the U.S. State Department. Portman brought photos of Warmbier to the meeting in New York, and urged the North Korean government to allow the Swedish ambassador to North Korea — the main U.S. contact with that government — to meet with Warmbier. The Swedish ambassador had met with Warmbier shortly before his March 2016 trial, but had not been permitted to see him after Warmbier was convicted during a one–hour proceeding in Pyongyang.
Warmbier, 22, was a student at the University of Virginia visiting North Korea as a tourist when he was arrested. The North Korean government explained his condition by saying he had developed botulism and then was given a sleeping pill — an account of which U.S. officials are deeply skeptical.
Warmbier’s family objected to an autopsy, so the Hamilton County coroner’s office only conducted an external examination of his body. They are still trying to determine a cause of death. Medical records have been reviewed and his condition was discussed extensively by treating physicians at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he was hospitalized after his June 13 return.
Wambier’s parents cited “awful, torturous mistreatment” by North Korea. Doctors last week said he suffered a “severe neurological injury” of unknown cause.
Portman said in the months after that New York meeting, he continued to reach out. His efforts, he said, were futile.
“I feel like I did not succeed in getting him home in the kind of condition we had hoped for,” he said. “But we got him home.”
In meeting with representatives of North Korea, Portman took an exceedingly rare step; very few U.S. officials are in contact with the secretive government.
Portman, who visited Warmbier in the hospital Sunday, said his initial response has been entirely focused on providing support to the family as they prepare to honor the young man. But in the long term, he said he advocates boycotts of Chinese companies that do business with the North Koreans, saying sanctions have not been sufficient. He said military options are limited. And he said he was frustrated that there was “no effective line of communication” that allowed U.S. officials to determine that Warmbier was in such dire condition.
Speaking on the Senate floor later Wednesday, Portman said North Korea told no one about the severe injury that left Warmbier incapacitated for 15 months. “They denied him the medical access that he deserved,” he said, saying the regime “demonstrated a complete failure to understand fundamental human rights.”
In Ohio on Wednesday, about 50 volunteers spent the morning tying blue and white ribbons along the road leading from the high school to the cemetery where Warmbier will be laid to rest, the Associated Press reported.
An organizer working with volunteers didn’t want them to speak to reporters as they decorated the route in the school’s colors for the final trip of the adventurous student, fondly remembered at his high school as popular, smart and active in sports.
Earlier this week, Jay Klein, 19, a rising sophomore at DePauw University, recalled joining the Wyoming High soccer team as a freshman and getting to know Warmbier as one of the friendliest, most spirited seniors playing.
“Walking around the hallways at school, you don’t really expect seniors to come up to you as a freshman,” Klein told the AP. “He was one of the only guys who would come up to me and ask me how my day was doing and that kind of thing.”