Mar 16, 2016- U.S. student Otto Warmbier has been given 15 years hard labour in North Korea for crimes against the state.
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Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old US university student, was arrested and detained by the North in January this year for allegedly conducting hostile acts against the regime.
Mr Warmbier was arrested in early January as he tried to leave the country after visiting as a tourist with a new year tour group.
Warmbier said he had been tasked with stealing the banner by a member of the Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming, Ohio, who wanted it “as a trophy” and offered him a used vehicle worth $10,000 if he succeeded.
North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the U.S.-backed South Korean government to take control of the Korean Peninsula.
“You can imagine how deeply anxious we were and what a traumatic experience this has been for us”, Warmbier’s father, Fred Warmbier, said in a statement provided by the University of Virginia.
“The accused confessed to the serious offense against [North Korea] he had committed, pursuant to the USA government’s hostile policy toward it, in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist”, stated North Korea’s official KCNA news agency in response to Wednesday’s ruling.
Tensions are particularly high following North Korea’s recent nuclear test and rocket launch, and massive joint military exercises now underway between the USA and South Korea that the North sees as a dress rehearsal for invasion.
Trials for foreigners facing similar charges in North Korea are generally short and punishments severe.
Otto Warmbier was arrested by police in the communist state after attempting to take the banner from his hotel in the nation’s capital, Pyongyang.
Detained foreigners are often required to make a public, officially-scripted acknowledgement of wrongdoing, and Warmbier was paraded in front of reporters and diplomats in Pyongyang at the end of last month.
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Footage of the carefully orchestrated event showed a sobbing Warmbier pleading to be released and saying he had made “the worst mistake of my life”.
