No details of what kind of charges or punishment Warmbier faces were immediately released.
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“As a general practice, North Korea arrests and imprisons people for actions that would not give rise to arrests, let alone imprisonment, in the United States, and there’s little doubt that North Korea uses detention as a tool for propaganda purposes”, he said.
Warmbier was detained on New Year’s Day as he was trying to board a flight to China.
Other Westerners detained in North Korea previously have confessed to crimes against the state.
Warmbier had been staying at the Yanggakdo International Hotel, a common place for tourists to stay.
It said Warmbier was acting under “the US government’s acquiescence and control”, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
Warmbier was reportedly in North Korea on a discount tour for college students, not a church group.
While most tourists to North Korea are from China, roughly 6,000 Westerners visit annually, though the United States and Canada advise against it.
Warmbier identified the church as the Friendship United Methodist Church, which is in his hometown, Wyoming, Ohio.
CNN spoke with the church’s Senior Pastor Meshach Kanyion, who did not know the purported church “deaconess” named by North Korean officials.
Warmbier’s family have not heard from him since his arrest, according to a statement provided to the Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia’s student-run newspaper. “We will have no further comment at this time”.
US student Otto Warmbier reacts at a news conference in this undated photo released by North Korea …
Asked about Mr. Warmbier’s televised apology, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday that the Obama administration was “aware of the situation involving Mr. Warmbier” and working through the Swedish Embassy to “learn about the circumstances of Mr. Warmbier’s detention”. “And I am praying to the heavens so that I may be returned home to my family”.
In his confession, the 21-year-old student of University of Virginia claims that he has been encouraged to commit this crime by a member of a church in OH (his friend’s mother) who said him that by stealing a political banner, he will offend communism and that he will help in promoting her idea of the West humiliating the communist, anti-Christian country. There are allegations that he was manipulated by the USA government to carry out the act.
In September 2014, CNN was granted a surprise interview with Matthew Miller and Jeffrey Fowle in Pyongyang after they were detained, along with Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae.
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He left a Bible in a local club hoping a North Korean would find it, which is considered a criminal offense in North Korea.
