North Korean prisoner released in coma state died after days

An American student who had been held the prisoner in North Korea for 17 months died just days after he was released in a coma state.

Otto Warmbier, 22, was arrested in North Korea while visiting as a tourist, had been described by doctors caring for him last week as having extensive brain damage that left him in a state of coma.

The student’s father, Fred Warmbier, said last week that his son had been “brutalised and terrorised by the Pyongyang government and that the family disbelieved North Korea’s story that his son had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.

Doctors who examined Otto Warmbier after his release said there was no sign of botulism in his system.

Warmbier was freed after the US State Department’s special envoy on North Korea, Joseph Yun, travelled to Pyongyang and demanded the student’s release on humanitarian grounds, capping a flurry of secret diplomatic contacts, a US official said last week.