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SEOUL: North Korea on Friday accused the US of waging a “smear campaign” over the death of a student who was sent back home in a coma, denying he was tortured or abused.
President Donald Trump has slammed the treatment of 22-year-old American Otto Warmbier, who spent more than a year in detention in the secretive state, as “a total disgrace.”
“The smear campaign against (North Korea) staged in the US compels us to make firm determination that... we should further sharpen the blade of law,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman said according to state media.
“The US should ponder over the consequences to be entailed from its reckless and rash act,” he said in an apparent warning over the fate of three other US citizens currently being held in the country.
The spokesman said that Warmbier was provided with proper medical treatment, and questioned why he died so soon after returning to the US.
“The fact that Warmbier died suddenly in less than a week just after his return to the US in his normal state of health indicators is a mystery to us as well,” he said.
Warmbier had been on a tourist trip to North Korea when he was detained and sentenced to hard labor early last year for allegedly stealing a political poster from a North Korean hotel.
Doctors said the University of Virginia student had suffered severe brain damage while in North Korean detention. He died on Monday at a Cincinnati hospital and was buried on Thursday. His family declined an autopsy.
The Foreign Ministry official denied that Warmbier was abused while in custody, condemning “groundless public opinion now circulating in the US that he died of torture and beating during his reform through labor.”
He said that North Korean medics had “brought him back alive” after his “heart was nearly stopped” but did not give any further details as to why he fell ill.
The US doctors had also said that Warmbier’s severe brain injury was most likely — given his young age — to have been caused by cardiopulmonary arrest cutting the blood supply to the brain.