Family members of an American university student who died last year after being detained in North Korea plan to attend a hearing next month, the Voice of America reported Sunday.
According to Voice of America, the family of Otto Warmbier, who died days after he was returned to the US in a coma in 2017, filed documents to the US District Court in Washington for legal discovery with six witnesses. The documents were submitted upon court order and the Warmbiers’ attorney suggested hearing dates of Dec. 18, 19 and 20.
The six witnesses include parents and siblings of Warmbier and two US-based experts on North Korea.
Fred Warmbier speaks as his wife Cindy looks on during a symposium on possible ways of international cooperation to urge the Democratic Republic of Korea to take concrete actions to improve the human rights situation in the DPRK at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan, New York, US, May 3, 2018. (Yonhap-Reuters)
A lawsuit was filed against North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho in April. The lawsuit charged the North Korean government with “hostage taking, illegal detention, torture and killing of a young American tourist” in order “to extract various concessions from the United States government.”
The VOA report comes a week after North Korea released yet another denial on accusations that Otto Warmbier died as a result of torture.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency on Saturday quoted the director of the Pyongyang Friendship Hospital as saying the recent reports surrounding Warmbier’s death were a “total distortion of the truth.”
It added that the investigation should look into the cause of Warmbier’s death following his arrival in the US, rather than blaming North Korea, adding that Warmbier’s “health indicators were all normal” at the time of his release.
The Warmbiers recently claimed in declarations filed in support of their lawsuit that there were evident signs on their son’s body when he came “home as a vegetable,” with “scars on his body and crooked teeth.”
North Korea has blamed botulism and ingestion of a sleeping pill for Warmbier’s condition. The coroner who examined Warmbier said no signs of botulism were discovered, and said there was lack of evidence of trauma to Warmbier’s teeth or broken bones.
The lawsuit filed by the Warmbiers is not the first filed against the North Korean regime. Several US citizens in the past sued the regime and won default judgments after Pyongyang declined to show up for the cases.
North Korea was sent notification of the case on June 19 via international express courier service DHL, according to the VOA. The document was sent to Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry and a North Korean individual with the surname Kim signed for the letter in Pyongyang.
If the court rules in favor of the Warmbiers, they may be awarded compensatory damages from the US Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund.
By Jung Min-kyung (
mkjung@heraldcorp.com)
