North Korea releases U.S. student facing 15 years in prison

UPDATE: Otto Warmbier’s parents say their 22-year-old son is returning home from North Korea in a coma. Fred and Cindy Warmbier told reporters Tuesday that they only learned of their son’s condition last week. He's reportedly been in a coma since March 2016. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced earlier Tuesday that North Korea agreed to free Warmbier but said nothing about his condition. Warmbier’s parents say he is traveling home in a Medivac transport. “We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime” in North Korea, they said.

OUR EARLIER REPORT (10:50 a.m.): North Korea has released Otto Warmbier, an American student serving a 15-year prison sentence for stealing a political banner, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement released Tuesday. Tillerson said Warmbier is on his way back to the United States, where he will reunite with his family. The State Department secured his release at the direction of President Donald Trump, Tillerson said. North Korean officials arrested the 21-year-old University of Virginia student in January 2016 at a Pyongyang airport. Warmbier confessed during a February press conference to trying to steal the banner containing a political slogan from a Pyongyang hotel. According to North Korea’s state-run media, Warmbier also confessed that a member of his church offered him a $10,000 used car to take down the banner and a secret society at his school encouraged him to do it. The country’s high court issued the prison sentence, with hard labor, a month later. Tillerson said the State Department continues to hold discussions for the release of three other Americans detained in North Korea. Warmbier’s release comes as former pro-basketball player Dennis Rodman travels to Pyongyang, claiming he wants to “open a door” for improved relations between the two countries.

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