SEOUL: North Korea Friday denied torturing or mistreating Otto Warmbier, the US student who died after being released from the North in a coma, in the first official reaction to his death. He blasted South Korea, accusing it of seeking to exploit Warmbier’s death to press its own demand for the release of six South Korean detainees. “Those who have absolutely no idea about how well we treated Warmbier under humanitarian conditions dare to utter ‘mistreatment’ and ‘torture’,” he said according to the official KCNA news agency. Warmbier was buried Thursday in Ohio, less than a week after he was sent back home in a mysterious coma. He had been incarcerated for more than a year in North Korea after allegedly stealing a political slogan while on a trip to the capital Pyongyang as a tourist.

Source: Manila Times June 23, 2017 08:37 UTC