Otto Warmbier: US judge orders N Korea to pay $500m over prisoner's death
The US federal court ruling is largely symbolic as there is no legal mechanism to force North Korea to pay.
Monday 24 December 2018 20:05, UK
A US federal judge has ordered North Korea to pay $500m to the parents of an American student who died after being jailed by the authoritarian regime.
Otto Warmbier, 22, was jailed for stealing a Pyongyang hotel sign in 2016 and died days after being medically evacuated to the US in June 2017.
His parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in April, alleging that North Korea "took Otto hostage for its own wrongful ends and brutally tortured and murdered him".
Supreme Court judge Beryl Howell has awarded the couple damages of $501.1m (£394.3m), though the ruling is largely symbolic as she has no legal mechanism to force North Korea to pay the sum.
Mr Warmbier died just a week after he was released from a North Korean prison and medically evacuated to Cincinnati.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier said that when their son returned to the US he had a shaved head, was blind, deaf and "staring blankly into space, jerking violently", "howling" and making an "involuntary, inhuman sound".
"As we looked at him and tried to comfort him it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth," Mr Warmbier told Fox News.
"Within two days of Otto being home his fever spiked to 104 degrees. He had a large scar on his right foot."
Pyongyang claimed the student fell into a coma after suffering from botulism and hit out at "slanderous talk about cruel treatment and torture". It denies mistreating the student.
However, Mr Warmbier said his son was "on his deathbed when he came home to us", adding that it was "completely unfair" to say he was in a coma.
"Otto was systematically tortured and intentionally injured by Kim Jong Un and his regime. This was no accident."
Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour in March 2016 after he admitted to trying to steal a propaganda sign from the staff-only area of a hotel he was staying at.
He told reporters he was offered a used car worth $10,000 (£7,840) if he could obtain a sign, adding that $200,000 (£156,860) would be paid to his mother if he was detained and didn't return.