FILE - In this March 16, 2016, file photo, American student Otto Warmbier, center, is escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea. Warmbier, whose parents say has been in a coma while serving... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this March 16, 2016, file photo, American student Otto Warmbier, center, is escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea. Warmbier, whose parents say has been in a coma while serving... (Associated Press) 
 
 SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea said Thursday it released an American university student over "humanitarian" reasons in its first official comment since he was returned to his home state of Ohio in a coma. 
 
 The state-run Korean Central News Agency said Otto Warmbier had been serving hard labor but didn't comment on his medical condition or how the country negotiated his release with the United States. 
 
 "Warmbier, who had been in hard labor, was sent back home on June 13, 2017, on humanitarian grounds according to the adjudication made on the same day by the Central Court of the DPRK," the agency said in the one-sentence report, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 
 
 The 22-year-old Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial in North Korea's Supreme Court in March 2016. He got 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion after he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner. 
 
 He was medically evacuated from North Korea and arrived in Cincinnati late Tuesday. His father, Fred Warmbier, told Fox News that his son was "terrorized and brutalized" and has been in a coma for more than a year. 
 
 The U.S., South Korea and others often accuse North Korea of using foreign detainees to wrest diplomatic concessions. Three Americans remain in custody in North Korea over accusations including alleged "hostile acts" and spying. ||||| Tucker Carlson sat down with the father of Otto Warmbier, an American student held captive by North Korea for more than a year. 
 
 The interview will air THURSDAY at 8 p.m. ET during Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News Channel. 
 
 Warmbier was released by the North Koreans last week, however he has reportedly been in a coma for several months. 
 
 Warmbier's father, Fred, told Carlson that the North Korean regime are "terrorists." 
 
 "They're brutal. There's no sense to anything here," he said. "They've crossed a line with my son, Otto." 
 
 Mr. Warmbier said the lessons from Otto's captivity will be for others to decide. 
 
 The Warmbier family held a news conference on Thursday morning, with Mr. Warmbier saying he doesn't believe anything that the "pariah regime" says about his son's time in captivity. 
 
 He also said former NBA player Dennis Rodman, who arrived in North Korea a day before Warmbier's release, had "nothing to do with" the matter of his son's detention. 
 
 LIVE BLOG: Parents of Otto Warmbier, student returned from North Korea, speak https://t.co/iIxxrpkJoT pic.twitter.com/Ssa4xuHziZ — Fox News (@FoxNews) June 15, 2017 
 
 As FoxNews.com reported. 
 
 The family of Otto Warmbier said Wednesday they are "adjusting to a different reality" following their son's return from North Korea, where he was "brutalized" by his captors and held for more than a year in a coma -- the cause of which is still unknown. "Otto is not in great shape right now," his father, Fred Warmbier, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in an exclusive interview Wednesday afternoon from his Cincinnati home. "Otto has been terrorized and brutalized for 18 months by a pariah regime in North Korea." 
 
 The 22-year-old college student was medically evacuated from North Korea and flown to a hospital in his hometown of Cincinnati late Tuesday following a brief flurry of diplomatic activity that involved the highest levels of U.S. government. The elder Warmbier singled out Joseph Yun, the U.S. special envoy on North Korea, as a key player in his son's release as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Trump. 
 
 Watch a preview clip from the exclusive interview above. ||||| WYOMING, Ohio (Reuters) - An American university student who was returned to the United States this week after being held in North Korea for 17 months has a severe brain injury and is in a state of “unresponsive wakefulness,” doctors said on Thursday. 
 
 Otto Warmbier, 22, who arrived in the United States on Tuesday, is stable but “shows no sign of understanding language, responding to verbal commands or awareness of his surrounding,” said Dr. Daniel Kanter, medical director of the neuroscience intensive care unit at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. 
 
 “He has not spoken,” Kanter said at a news conference. “He has not engaged in any purposeful movements or behaviors.” He said Warmbier was breathing on his own. 
 
 Read the Reuters backstory 
 
 Warmbier, from Wyoming, Ohio, has been in a coma since March 2016, shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea, his family said on Tuesday. 
 
 He was arrested for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan, North Korean media reported. He was visiting North Korea with a tour group. 
 
 On Thursday, North Korea said that it had released Warmbier “on humanitarian grounds.” 
 
 The University of Virginia student’s father, Fred Warmbier, said at an earlier news conference that his son had been “brutalized and terrorized” by the North Korean government. 
 
 Fred Warmbier said the family did not believe North Korea’s story that his son had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill. 
 
 Doctors said on Thursday that there was no sign of botulism in Otto Warmbier’s system. 
 
 Kanter said that Warmbier had suffered “extensive loss of brain tissue in all regions of the brain,” but he declined to discuss Warmbier’s prognosis at the request of his family. 
 
 FILE PHOTO - Otto Frederick Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who has been detained in North Korea since early January, attends a news conference in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this photo released by Kyodo February 29, 2016. Mandatory credit REUTERS/Kyodo 
 
 While doctors are uncertain as to what exactly caused the condition, cardiac arrest that stops the flow of blood to the brain is generally seen as resulting in the death of brain tissue. 
 
 Cardiac arrest in young, healthy people is rare and generally caused by either intoxication or traumatic injury, Dr. Jordan Bonomo, a specialist in neurosurgery and neurocritical care at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, said at the news conference. 
 
 Although doctors had no information about the type of medical treatment Warmbier received while in North Korea, they did receive MRI images from North Korea dated April 2016, Kanter said. Based on those images, doctors estimate the brain injury likely occurred in the preceding weeks, he said. 
 
 Doctors said there was no evidence that Warmbier suffered any broken bones. 
 
 On Thursday, the State Department said that its special envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, who negotiated Warmbier’s release during a visit to the country this week, had also met with three other U.S. citizens being held in North Korea. 
 
 Tensions between the United States and North Korea have been heightened by North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests. Pyongyang has vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the U.S. mainland. 
 
 Fred Warmbier said he was stunned when told of his son’s condition one week ago. 
 
 “I don’t know what being in shock is, but I’m pretty sure I was,” he said. 
 
 “There is no excuse for any civilized nation to have kept his condition secret and denied him top-notch medical care for so long.” 
 
 He said his wife, Cindy, had not left their son’s side since his return to the United States and that he had spoken with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday night. 
 
 U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters on Thursday, “We’re glad he’s home.” He said officials would not comment on Warmbier’s health or how he came to be in his current condition. 
 
 Slideshow (5 Images) 
 
 Tillerson said on Wednesday that U.S. officials were considering some type of travel visa restriction to North Korea. 
 
 U.S. lawmakers introduced a bill last month that would ban U.S. citizens from traveling to North Korea as tourists and require them to obtain special permission for other types of visits, following the detention of at least 17 Americans there in the past decade. 
 
 In Wyoming, a northern Cincinnati suburb of about 8,000 people, Warmbier’s return to the United States was marked by blue and white ribbons, representing the colors of the local high school, tied around trees and telephone polls.
– North Korea has issued its first official comment since releasing Otto Warmbier, but it's not one that clears up the biggest questions. "Warmbier, who had been in hard labor, was sent back home on June 13, 2017, on humanitarian grounds according to the adjudication made on the same day by the Central Court" of North Korea, reads the entirety of the report from the state-run Korean Central News Agency, per the AP. Nothing further was said regarding how the release came to be negotiated or how Warmbier ended up in a coma. Pyongyang has claimed the 22-year-old contracted botulism and took a sleeping pill before falling into a coma immediately after his March 2016 trial, but at least one doctor disputes that. More: The Washington Post does have some further details regarding the release: It reports that after finally being informed of Warmbier's health, State Department Special Representative for North Korea Joseph Yun helped facilitate his removal from the country. The Post has more on the reaction to Warmbier's homecoming from those in his hometown of Wyoming, Ohio, population 8,400, and more about Warmbier himself: a salutatorian, homecoming king, and soccer team captain who was attending the University of Virginia on a "prestigious scholarship" awarded to "intellectually curious" students. As for what befell Warmbier, his parents may shine a light on that. Reuters reports Fred and Cindy Warmbier will "detail his mistreatment" during a Thursday morning press conference at their son's former high school. Fred Warmbier did speak with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, in an interview that will air Thursday at 8pm EDT on Fox News. We're "adjusting to a different reality," he says. "Otto is not in great shape right now ... [he] has been terrorized and brutalized for 18 months by a pariah regime in North Korea." As for what the brutality was, the New York Times cites an unnamed senior US official who says Warmbier was beaten. "The mystery is why," as the Times puts it. By its count, 16 Americans have been held by the country in the past 21 years, and they've typically been abused psychologically, not physically, though there have been exceptions (Robert Park, detained in 2009, says North Korean women used a club to beat his genitals). The feeling seems to be that North Korea is wary of further tarnishing the world's perception of its human rights record.