New York, June 25th: Otto Warmbier was arrested in January last year and sentenced to 15 years’ hard labor for allegedly attempting to steal a propaganda poster from a staff-only area of his hotel in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. He was released this month in what North Korea described as a “humanitarian gesture”.
Otto Warmbier, an Ohio native and student at the University of Virginia, was arrested in North Korea in January 2016 while visiting as a tourist as part of a tourist group operated by a Chinese Tour Operator. He was sentenced two months later to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, the nation's state media said.
The circumstances of his detention and what medical treatment he received in North Korea remain unknown, but we can be certain that he was subjected to a kind of torture that might have included multiple uses of sodium pentothal according to Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, of the London Center for Policy Research, “He was tortured not so much the way—pulling fingernails out with tools but by repeated drugging—sodium pentothal,” Shaffer told the journalists who contacted him for comment.
The retired U.S. Army general said North Korea was trying to figure out whether Warmbier was a CIA spy and repeated exposure to drugs during that year in captivity is what caused brain damage.Torture and inhumane treatment in prisons in North Korea is widely and systemically used in the hermit kingdom under the rule of Kim Jong un, the video on this article gives a closer look based on testimony of North Korean refugees who fled the North to South Korea in a clear violation of human rights convention.
There are still 3 more Americans in captivity at North Korea which they are missionary Kim Dong Chul and academics Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration would "continue to apply economic and political pressure" on North Korea, in conjunction with U.S. allies and China, "to change this behavior and this regime."