The parents of Otto Warmbier, the American student who suffered a lethal brain injury while he was held hostage by the North Korean government, have filed a claim in court on a North Korean vessel seized by the U.S. government.
The legal action is part of their ongoing effort to collect on the $501 million in damages that were awarded to them by a U.S. federal court in a judgment last December holding the North Korean government responsible for Otto’s death within days of being returned to the United States in June 2017.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier, Otto’s parents, said in a statement: “We are committed to holding North Korea accountable for the death of our son Otto, and will work tirelessly to seize North Korean assets wherever they may be found.”
Benjamin Hatch, one of the Warmbier family’s attorneys, said in their claim that “despite receiving all required notices and service, North Korea never entered an appearance in, defended against, or engaged in any settlement discussions related to the civil action against it” and therefore “the Warmbiers are left to chase down the assets of North Korea to recover what they can for the torture and death of their son at the hands of North Korea’s dictator, who with ‘his cronies, show[s] no regard for human life’.”
Warmbier, then 21, was a University of Virginia student arrested in North Korea in January 2016 after allegedly trying to take a propaganda poster. He made what experts and family members testified was likely a forced confession and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. While in North Korean custody, he was allegedly tortured and suffered what would prove to be a fatal traumatic brain injury. He was returned to the United States in June 2017 in a comatose state, never regained consciousness, and died at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center later that month.
In her ruling on the case on Christmas Eve 2018, Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the Warmbiers “have established North Korea’s liability to them” and, in awarding punitive damages of $501,134,683.80, concluded that “North Korea is liable for the torture, hostage taking, and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier, and the injuries to his mother and father, Fred and Cindy Warmbier.”
In their court claim, the attorney for the Warmbier family noted this week that Howell had ruled that the Warmbiers “experienced North Korea’s brutality first-hand when North Korea seized their son to use as a pawn in that totalitarian state’s global shenanigans and face-off with the United States.”
The attorney pointed out that Howell had “authorized the Warmbiers to enforce their judgment against North Korea, through attachment or execution, pursuant to Sections 1610(a)-(b) of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.”
The North Korea ship in question, named the Wise Honest, was seized by the U.S. government this year and is alleged to have been one of the “principal vessels” in “the Korea Songi Scheme” which “allowed North Korean companies to export raw natural resources, notably coal, which provide a crucial source of revenue for DPRK-based companies and for the North Korean government” in violation of United Nations Security Council prohibitions and in evasion of U.S. sanctions.
When the vessel’s seizure was announced in May, U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Demers said “this sanctions-busting ship is now out of service” and the Justice Department would do everything in its power “to enforce the sanctions enacted by the U.S. and the global community” and would continue “applying maximum pressure to the North Korean regime to cease its belligerence.”
U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said this was “the first-ever seizure of a North Korean cargo vessel for violating international sanctions” and that the scheme they’d disrupted had “not only allowed North Korea to evade sanctions” but had also helped “expand North Korea’s capabilities and continuing the cycle of sanctions evasion.”
After a meeting with Kim Jong Un in February of this year, President Trump said at a press conference in Vietnam that the two leaders had discussed Warmbier’s death privately. ”He felt badly about it. He felt very badly,” Trump insisted. “He tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”
Warmbier’s parents responded that they felt they “must speak out” and that “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”
Trump followed up the same day, tweeting, “I never like being misinterpreted, but especially when it comes to Otto Warmbier and his great family. Remember, I got Otto out along with three others.”
“Of course I hold North Korea responsible for Otto’s mistreatment and death,” Trump said. “Most important, Otto Warmbier will not have died in vain.”
