Showing posts with label Otto Warmbier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Otto Warmbier. Show all posts

Monday, June 19, 2017

Otto Warmbier, imprisoned in North Korea, dies in US

They likely pulled the plug on this guy because he had no brain left to come back to ever, so there was no use keeping a brainless body alive.

Begin quote from:

Otto Warmbier, imprisoned in North Korea, dies in US

USA TODAY - ‎1 hour ago‎
CINCINNATI - No other outcome was possible. That's the message in a brief statement issued Monday by Otto Warmbier's family.
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Otto Warmbier
 
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Otto Warmbier, imprisoned in North Korea, dies in U.S.

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Otto Warmbier was imprisoned in North Korea for more than a year. He died less than a week after his release back to the U.S. Wochit
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CINCINNATI —  No other outcome was possible.
That's the message in a brief statement issued Monday by Otto Warmbier’s family.
Warmbier, 22, was imprisoned for a year and a half in North Korea. He finally made it home this past week, but he was in a coma. Doctors described his condition as a state of “unresponsive wakefulness.”
At 2:20 p.m. ET on Monday, he died.
“It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost – future time that won’t be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds,” reads a statement from parents Fred and Cindy Warmbier.
“But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person. You can tell from the outpouring of emotion from the communities that he touched – Wyoming, Ohio and the University of Virginia to name just two – that the love for Otto went well beyond his immediate family.”
Related:
President Trump and wife Melania offered condolences to the Warmbier family in a statement released Monday by the White House. "Otto's fate deepens my Administration's determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency," the statement read.
The Warmbiers thanked supporters for their thoughts and prayers and the professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who cared for their son.
“Unfortunately,” they wrote, “the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today.”
The death caps a heartbreaking saga that gripped the Warmbiers' small hometown, just a few miles north of Cincinnati. There, in Wyoming, Ohio, Otto Warmbier was a standout soccer player and a 2013 salutatorian at Wyoming High School, his alma mater.
He went on to the University of Virgina, and it was during college, in late 2015, that he traveled to North Korea with a Chinese-based tour group.
He was detained at the airport on Jan. 2, 2016, as the group was preparing to leave the country. He was charged with engaging in anti-state activity for allegedly trying to steal a poster from a hotel, and he was sentenced in March 2016 to 15 years of hard labor.
His family got only one letter from him after his televised trial. After that, they heard nothing until shortly before June 13, when he was finally flown home.
At a press conference on Thursday, Fred Warmbier praised his son’s courage and tried to grapple with the bittersweet homecoming. There is relief, he said, “that Otto is now home in the arms of those who love him. And anger, that he was so brutally treated for so long.”
When he landed at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport, their son unable to see or speak, the Warmbiers wrote in their statement on Monday. He wasn’t reacting to verbal commands. “He looked very uncomfortable – almost anguished.”
After just one day, though, his face started to lighten. He looked at peace.  
“He was home and we believe he could sense that,” the Warmbiers wrote. “… We are at peace and at home too.”
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1472

Otto Warmbier, imprisoned in North Korea, dies in U.S.

Play Video
Otto Warmbier was imprisoned in North Korea for more than a year. He died less than a week after his release back to the U.S. Wochit
1472 LINKEDINCOMMENTMORE
CINCINNATI —  No other outcome was possible.
That's the message in a brief statement issued Monday by Otto Warmbier’s family.
Warmbier, 22, was imprisoned for a year and a half in North Korea. He finally made it home this past week, but he was in a coma. Doctors described his condition as a state of “unresponsive wakefulness.”
At 2:20 p.m. ET on Monday, he died.
“It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost – future time that won’t be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds,” reads a statement from parents Fred and Cindy Warmbier.
“But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person. You can tell from the outpouring of emotion from the communities that he touched – Wyoming, Ohio and the University of Virginia to name just two – that the love for Otto went well beyond his immediate family.”
Related:
President Trump and wife Melania offered condolences to the Warmbier family in a statement released Monday by the White House. "Otto's fate deepens my Administration's determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency," the statement read.
The Warmbiers thanked supporters for their thoughts and prayers and the professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who cared for their son.
“Unfortunately,” they wrote, “the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today.”
The death caps a heartbreaking saga that gripped the Warmbiers' small hometown, just a few miles north of Cincinnati. There, in Wyoming, Ohio, Otto Warmbier was a standout soccer player and a 2013 salutatorian at Wyoming High School, his alma mater.
He went on to the University of Virgina, and it was during college, in late 2015, that he traveled to North Korea with a Chinese-based tour group.
He was detained at the airport on Jan. 2, 2016, as the group was preparing to leave the country. He was charged with engaging in anti-state activity for allegedly trying to steal a poster from a hotel, and he was sentenced in March 2016 to 15 years of hard labor.
His family got only one letter from him after his televised trial. After that, they heard nothing until shortly before June 13, when he was finally flown home.
At a press conference on Thursday, Fred Warmbier praised his son’s courage and tried to grapple with the bittersweet homecoming. There is relief, he said, “that Otto is now home in the arms of those who love him. And anger, that he was so brutally treated for so long.”
When he landed at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport, their son unable to see or speak, the Warmbiers wrote in their statement on Monday. He wasn’t reacting to verbal commands. “He looked very uncomfortable – almost anguished.”
After just one day, though, his face started to lighten. He looked at peace.  
“He was home and we believe he could sense that,” the Warmbiers wrote. “… We are at peace and at home too.”
Follow Hannah Sparling on 

Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Otto Warmbier, jailed US student, freed by North Korea

begin quote from:
DEVELOPING: North Korea has released jailed U.S. university student Otto Warmbier, …
 

Otto Warmbier, jailed US student, freed by North Korea

North Korea has released jailed U.S. university student Otto Warmbier, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday.
The 22-year-old Warmbier has served just over a year of his 15-year sentence -- allegedly for taking down a sign of the late dictator Kim Jong Il while Warmbier was in the country with a tour group.
The U.S. has no diplomatic relations in North Korea. Foreigners who have been detained or imprisoned in the Hermit Kingdom often have a shared experience: confusion, coached confessions, communication blackouts and isolation.
The State Department did not comment beyond Tillerson's brief announcement.
Warmbier was detained on Jan. 2, 2016, at Pyongyang International Airport, while visiting the country as a tourist with Young Pioneer Tour. He was charged with stealing the sign from a staff-only floor in the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang and committing “crimes against the state.” He was given a one-hour trial in March 2016, when the government presented fingerprints, CCTV footage and pictures of a political banner to make its case against the American student.
“I beg that you see how I am only human,” Warmbier said at his trial. “And how I have made the biggest mistake of my life.”
Despite his pleas, the college student was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. In a post-trial video released to the world, Warmbier, under obvious duress, praised his captors for his treatment and for handling of the case “fair and square."
Warmbier's release leaves three U.S. citizens currently known to be held in North Korea: accounting professor Kim Sang Duk, businessman Kim Dong Chul and Kim Hak-Song, who worked at Pyongyang University.
AMERICANS RELEASED FROM NORTH KOREAN CAPTIVITY BACK ON US SOIL
In the past, North Korea has generally quickly released any American citizens it detained – waiting at most for a U.S. official or statesman to come and to personally bail out detainees. But that appears to be changing.
Early in the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un, North Korea called on its people to rally behind him and protect him as "human shields." But with the U.S. leading a growing international coalition determined to counter North Korea's nuclear and missile testing as well as threats against neightbors and Western countries, the Americans could be bargaining chips at best and human shields at worst, according to experts.
Warmbier's release comes amid simmering tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, largely owing to Pyongyang's continued testing of nuclear-capable missiles.
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman, a self-described friend of Kim Jong Un, recently landed in North Korea on a non-U.S.-sanctioned mission he said was aimed at promoting sports in the isolated nation.