Family of Otto Warmbier files lawsuit against North Korea

The parents of Otto Warmbier, the U.S. college student who died after a lengthy detention in North Korea, are suing the hermit kingdom for wrongful death, saying their son was tortured and beaten while he was there.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the country of North Korea. It alleges that Warmbier, who was arrested in January 2016, was used as a political pawn and left in an unrecoverable state when he was returned to the U.S. in June 2017.

“Otto was blind and deaf. He had a shaved head, a feeding tube coming out of his nose, was jerking violently and howling, and was completely unresponsive to any of their efforts to comfort him,” the filing states. It says Warmbier also had a new scar on his right foot, which North Korean doctors did not explain.

Warmbier, who attended the University of Virginia, was detained by North Korean authorities during a five-day visit to the country with a Chinese tour group. Once in custody, the lawsuit says, Warmbier was forced into making a televised confession, where he admitted to taking down a political poster from the hotel where he was staying. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for the infraction and was ultimately prevented from communicating with his family for 15 months.

North Korea denied torturing Warmbier, claiming he had contracted botulism — a conclusion American doctors dispute.

Warmbier’s parents are seeking "economic and non-economic compensatory damages” for what they describe as an “extrajudicial killing.”

But the suit comes at a sensitive time for the Trump administration, which is gearing up for possible talks with Kim Jong Un. On Tuesday, Trump praised the dictator during a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron.

“He really has been very open and, I think, very honorable, from everything we're seeing," Trump said. "We are going to be having a meeting with Kim Jong Un and that will be very soon. We have been told directly that they would like to have the meeting as soon as possible."

Cover image: PYONGYANG, March 16, 2016-- American student Otto Frederick Warmbier, center, arrives at a court for his trial in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, on March 16, 2015. (Xinhua/Lu Rui via Getty Images)