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Seoul (AFP) – The director of the North Korean hospital who treated Otto Warmbier, the American student who died after his detention in the country, rejected the new allegations that he was tortured while in detention.
The 22-year-old man was jailed in the North for more than a year and was released in a comatose state in 2017, but died shortly after returning home.
The exact cause of his death remains unknown, but a recent US media report claimed that there was fresh evidence that he had been beaten by the regime.
The director of the Pyongyang Friendship Hospital – who treated Warmbier – called the claims "a total distortion of the truth" in a statement released Saturday by the official KCNA North news agency. .
"The American doctors who came to the DPRK to facilitate the repatriation of Warmbier acknowledged that all of his health indicators were normal and sent an insurance letter to our hospital," the text says, using the same name. official acronym of North Korea.
"Now the question is what is the hidden reason for these American doctors trying to make a difference in the cause of Warmbier's death," the statement added.
KCNA's statement comes hours after Voice of America published an article about a lawsuit filed by Warmbier's parents, accusing the North Korean regime of torturing and murdering their son.
According to the report, former Warmbier dentists stated that he had been traumatized to the teeth and a neurologist who treated him after returning from detention said that the student had suffered "significant" brain damage.
North Korea denied having tortured Warmbier and claimed that he had botulism in detention.
Warmbier was arrested for stealing a propaganda poster at his hotel during a trip to North Korea and sentenced to 15 years of forced labor.
After lengthy negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, he was released last year but died in less than a week.
US President Donald Trump accused Pyongyang of brutally abusing the student, but then praised Northern leader Kim Jong Un as "very honorable" following the historic summit. held in Singapore in June.
Rights groups have criticized the rapid diplomatic thaw on the peninsula, saying it had overshadowed the widespread human rights violations in North Korea.
The Kim family led the poor, nuclear-armed country with an ubiquitous personality cult and is accused of a litany of state-sanctioned rights abuses, including the torture, rape, execution and brutal repression of dissent.
