(From Reuters)
North Korea’s supreme court sentenced American student Otto Warmbier, who was arrested while visiting the country, to 15 years of hard labor for crimes against the state, China’s Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.
Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was detained by the North in January for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel in Pyongyang and had confessed to crimes against the state, North Korean media said previously.
Warmbier, who is from Wyoming, Ohio, and was 21 at the time of his arrest, told a media conference in Pyongyang last month that his crime “is very severe and pre-planned.”
He was at the end of a five-day New Year’s group tour of North Korea when he was stopped at airport immigration before being taken away by officials, according to the tour operator that had arranged the trip. Read More