WASHINGTON/CINCINNATI, (Reuters) – Otto Warmbier, an American university student held prisoner in North Korea for 17 months and said by his family to be in a coma, was medically evacuated from the reclusive country after a rare visit there from a high-level U.S. official.
Warmbier, 22, a University of Virginia student from suburban Cincinnati, arrived in the United States on Tuesday evening, witnesses said.
His release came after Joseph Yun, the U.S. State Department’s special envoy on North Korea, traveled to Pyongyang and demanded Warmbier’s release on “humanitarian grounds,” capping a flurry of secret diplomatic contacts, a U.S. official said.
Warmbier’s parents, Fred and Cindy, confirmed their son was on a medevac flight.
“Sadly, he is in a coma and we have been told he has been in that condition since March of 2016,” the parents said in a statement. “We learned of this only one week ago. We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime in North Korea.”
Warmbier was detained in January 2016 and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March last year for trying to steal an item with a propaganda slogan, according to North Korean media.
Warmbier’s plane landed at Cincinnati Municipal Lunken Airport at around 10.15 p.m. local time (0215 GMT), according to a Reuters witness. Medical personnel carried a male, believed to be Warmbier and wearing a blue shirt and dark blue pants, off the plane without the use of a stretcher.
The person carried from the plane did not appear to be moving independently, the Reuters witness said.
A small group of family friends was nearby to celebrate Warmbier’s arrival, cheering and holding signs that read “Pray for Otto” and “Welcome home Otto.”
The man was loaded into an ambulance bound for the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where a hospital spokeswoman said he would receive treatment.
Warmbier’s family said they were told by North Korean officials, through contacts with American envoys, that Warmbier fell ill from botulism some time after his March 2016 trial and lapsed into a coma after taking a sleeping pill, the Washington Post reported.
The New York Times quoted a senior U.S. official as saying Washington recently received intelligence reports that Warmbier had been repeatedly beaten in custody.
Hours after his release, the U.S. government blamed Pyongyang for a raft of cyber attacks stretching back to 2009 and warned more were likely.
