Parents of US student to claim mistreatment in North Korean prison

Cincinnati: The parents of an American university student who was detained in North Korea are expected on Thursday to detail his mistreatment during 17 months in prison when he fell into a coma.

Otto Warmbier`s parents, Fred and Cindy, are scheduled to speak to reporters at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) at their son`s former high school in the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming, Ohio.

Warmbier, 22, was "brutalized and terrorized" by the North Korean regime, his parents said in a statement released Tuesday before he arrived in the United States on a medevac flight. 

He was being treated at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, but details of his condition have not been released. 

Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was sentenced in March 2016 to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item with a propaganda slogan, according to North Korean media.

In a one-line report issued on Thursday, North Korea`s official KCNA news agency said he was "sent back home on June 13, 2017 on humanitarian grounds according to the adjudication made on the same day by the Central Court of the DPRK."

Warmbier`s family said they were told by North Korean officials, through contacts with American envoys, that Warmbier fell ill from botulism some time after his trial and lapsed into a coma after taking a sleeping pill, the Washington Post reported. 

The New York Times quoted a senior US official as saying Washington received intelligence reports that Warmbier had been repeatedly beaten in custody.

Joseph Yun, the U.S. State Department`s special envoy on North Korea, traveled to Pyongyang and demanded Warmbier`s release on humanitarian grounds, capping a flurry of secret diplomatic contacts, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

The State Department is continuing to discuss three other detained Americans with North Korea.

Tensions between the United States and North Korea have been heightened by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since the beginning of last year.

Pyongyang has also vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the US mainland.

The US government this week issued a rare alert squarely blaming the North Korean government for a raft of cyber attacks stretching back to 2009 and warning that more were likely.