North Korea’s state-run news agency said Friday the death of Otto Warmbier, who spent 17 months detained in the country, is a “mystery” and rejected claims that the 22-year-old was tortured.
“The fact that Warmbier died suddenly in less than a week just after his return to the U.S. in his normal state of health indicators is a mystery to us as well,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, as reported by CNN.
Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was detained in North Korea in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor after he allegedly attempted to steal a political banner in his Pyongyang hotel, which the government deemed a “hostile act.”
The 22-year-old was released last week and returned to his home state of Ohio in a state of “unresponsive wakefulness.” Doctors said Warmbier suffered loss of tissue in all regions of his brain, though the cause of his injuries remains unknown.
North Korean officials told the U.S. that Warmbier contracted botulism and became comatose after taking a sleeping pill.
But Warmbier’s family believe he was mistreated by North Korea.
“Unfortunately, the awful, torturous mistreatment of our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today,” Warmbier’s parents said in a statement announcing his death.
Despite the response from Warmbier’s family and U.S. officials, including President Trump who criticized the “brutality of the North Korean regime,” North Korea’s state-run media said Pyongyang treated the 22-year-old in accordance with domestic law.
KCNA also snubbed the “groundless public opinion now circulating in the U.S. that he died of torture and beating during his reform through labor,” and said Warmbier was a “criminal.”
“Although we had no reason at all to show mercy to such a criminal of the enemy state, we provided him with medical treatment and care with all sincerity on humanitarian basis until his return to the U.S., considering that his health got worse,” an unnamed spokesman from North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement, according to KCNA.
The spokesman went on to criticize the U.S. for attempting to “disparage the prestige” of North Korea.
“The U.S. is making every frantic effort to disparage the prestige of the dignified DPRK and stifle it while imposing heinous sanctions and pressure unprecedented in history,” the spokesman said, referencing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s formal name.
Warmbier’s funeral was held Thursday in Wyoming, Ohio.
