Otto Warmbier,Declared Dead But The N.Koreans Had killed him Before He Left
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| Otto Wambier Feb 2016 at hands of his killers |
They killed this young man for no reason what so ever but then killing is so natural there and life has no meaning at all for everyone but their leaders. adamfoxie
Otto Warmbier, the American student who was in a coma after his release from captivity in North Korea, has died, his family said in a statement.
"It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home," read a statement signed by his parents, Fred and Cindy. "Although we would never hear his voice again, within a day of the countenance of his face changed — he was at peace," they wrote. "He was home and we believe he could sense that."
The North Korean government said the University of Virginia student, who was held for 17 months, fell into a coma after contracting botulism and ingesting a sleeping pill. But doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center have disputed this assessment and said there was "no evidence" of "active botulism."
North Korea detained Warmbier in January 2016 after he was accused of a "hostile act" while on a group tour of the reclusive and rogue state. Warmbier was accused of stealing a poster at his hotel in Pyongyang, and after a short trial, Warmbier read a prepared statement and cried. He was sentenced to 15 years of prison and hard labor.
A statement from President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump offered their condolences to the Warmbier family. "Otto's fate deepens my Administration's determination 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 statement read.
Sen. John McCain went further.
"Let us state the facts plainly: Otto Warmbier, an American citizen, was murdered by the Kim Jong-un regime," the Republican from Arizona said in a statement. "In the final year of his life, he lived the nightmare in which the North Korean people have been trapped for 70 years: forced labor, mass starvation, systematic cruelty, torture, and murder."
Kim Kwang Hyon / AP
Warmbier before reading a statement in February 2016, in Pyongyang, North Korea.
Warmbier was released last Tuesday and was immediately taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where doctors later said he was unresponsive to verbal cues and had not spoken.
According to his doctors — who said they were unaware of the treatment he received — brain scans sent from North Korea in April 2016 indicated that a brain injury likely occurred weeks prior.
"Even if you believe their explanation of botulism and a sleeping pill causing the coma — and we don't — there is no excuse for any civilized nation to have kept his condition secret and denied him top-notch medical care for so long," said his father, Fred Warmbier, at a press conference last Thursday. Warmbier's father, Fred, also said that he had only recently learned that his son was in a coma for nearly his entire imprisonment.
"There's no excuse for the way the North Koreans treated our son and no excuse for the way they have treated so many others," Fred said.
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