Thread: US student Otto Warmbier given 15 years hard labour in North Korea

U.S. parents of detained student speak out against North Korea

CINCINNATI--The parents of a young Ohioan who was detained in North Korea for more than a year and died soon after being released said Tuesday he was "jerking violently," howling and "staring blankly" when he returned home on a medical flight.


Fred and Cindy Warmbier appeared on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" morning TV show amid an escalating war of words between the Trump administration and North Korea. A North Korean official has claimed U.S. President Donald Trump has, in effect, declared war, which the White House denied.


Otto Warmbier's father said they wanted to speak out about his condition after hearing North Korea claiming to be a victim that's being picked on.


"North Korea is not a victim. They're terrorists," he said. "They kidnapped Otto. They tortured him. They intentionally injured him. They are not victims."


The parents described the condition his family found him in when they went aboard an air ambulance that arrived June 13 in Cincinnati. They said Warmbier, a 22-year-old University of Virginia student, was howling, making an "involuntary, inhuman sound," "staring blankly into space jerking violently," and was blind and deaf with his head shaved. Fred Warmbier said his mouth "looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth."


Fred Warmbier said Otto's mother and sister ran off the plane at the initial sight of him.


"We weren't prepared ... no mother, no parent should ever have gone through what we went through," Cindy Warmbier said. She said it was "inexcusable" that her son had been alone in captivity for so long with no one to comfort him. She said she "got it together" and stayed with him after his arrival.


President Trump tweeted about the family's appearance, calling it "a great interview" and that: "Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea."


Fred Warmbier also said Otto had a large scar on his right foot and a high fever.


He died less than a week after returning at University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Doctors there said he arrived in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness" and had suffered a "severe neurological injury" of uncertain cause.


North Korea has denied mistreating the youth, sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster. He was arrested that January as he prepared to leave the country after visiting as a tourist.

U.S. parents of detained student speak out against North Korea?The Asahi Shimbun

President Trump tweeted about the family's appearance, calling it "a great interview"

What a fucking imbecile.

'No signs of torture' in death of Otto Warmbier
US student held in Pyongyang died from a lack of oxygen to the brain caused by an unknown injury, coroner says.

An American student who died days after being released from North Korea in a coma displayed no obvious signs of torture despite assertions by his parents and US President Donald Trump, a medical examiner said.

Otto Warmbier's death on June 19 from a lack of oxygen and blood to the brain resulted from an unknown injury that occurred more than a year before he died, Dr Lakshmi Sammarco said at a news conference on Wednesday.

"We don't know what happened to him and that's the bottom line," Sammarco said. "We're never going to know unless the people who were there come forward and say, 'This is what happened to Otto.'"

The coroner and a September 11 report by her office cited complications of chronic deficiency of oxygen and blood supply to the brain in Warmbier’s death. Only an external examination of the body, rather than a full autopsy, was conducted at the request of Warmbier's family.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/signs-torture-death-otto-warmbier-170928051652403.html

^ No evidence of physical torture, but there may have been mental torture.

If the family had allowed an autopsy, there may have been evidence of physical torture...

The family didn't though.

Very odd.

Little makes sense about the whole story.