Otto Warmbier: US student sent home from North Korea dies
Channel: Flash video
Date: 2017-06-20

The US student held in captivity for more than 15 months in North Korea has died a week after returning home.
Otto Warmbier, 22, was serving 15 years of hard labour for attempting to steal a propaganda sign from a hotel.
He was sent back to the US last Tuesday on humanitarian grounds - it emerged he had been in a coma for a year.
North Korea said he had contracted botulism but his family say North Korea subjected him to "awful torturous mistreatment" in detention.
A team of US doctors have also disputed North Korea's version of events
Mr Warmbier had suffered severe brain damage, and was medically evacuated from North Korea on 13 June to a hospital in his home city of Cincinnati, Ohio. It is unclear how he fell ill.

Media captionDonald Trump says the US will 'handle' North Korea
Mr Warmbier had suffered severe brain damage, and was medically evacuated from North Korea on 13 June to a hospital in his home city of Cincinnati, Ohio. It is unclear how he fell ill.
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A statement from the family on Monday said: "It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home. Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2:20pm."
They said the student had been "unable to speak, unable to see and unable to react to verbal commands
But a team of doctors assessing him in Cincinnati said they had found "no sign of botulism".
Doctors confirmed that there was no sign he had been physically abused during his detention, based on scans.
They believe respiratory arrest led to his condition, which is caused by a lack of oxygen and blood in the brain.
President Donald Trump said Mr Warmbier's death had deepened his administration's resolve "to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency".
"The United States once again condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim," the presidential statement added.
Otto Warmbier, the 22-year-old student who was returned in an unconscious state last week from North Korea, died Monday, his family said.

"Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2:20 p.m.," his parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, said in a statement.

Otto Warmbier's doctors at University of Cincinnati Medical Center said last week that he had extensive brain damage dating back longer than a year. They said he was in a state of unresponsive wakefulness and wasn't aware of his surroundings.

The doctors who treated Warmbier said they had agree not to speak about his outlook, but they had said he did not require help breathing.

The Warmbier family did not say how Otto died.

"We would like to thank the wonderful professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who did everything they could for Otto. 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 their statement.

Related: Three Americans Still Held by North Korea

"It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost — future time that won't be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds," the family added.

"You can tell from the outpouring of emotion from the communities that he touched — Wyoming, Ohio and the University of Virginia to name just two — that the love for Otto went well beyond his immediate family."

Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was detained in Pyongyang in January 2016 while on a tourist trip to North Korea. He was charged with committing a hostile act against the government after officials said he had tried to steal a propaganda banner from a hotel. After a one-hour trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 15 years' hard labor.