Seoul: North Korea said on Friday the death of US university student Otto Warmbier soon after his return home was a mystery and dismissed accusations that Warmbier had died because of torture and beating during his captivity as "groundless".
North Korea's foreign ministry spokesman said Warmbier was "a victim of the policy of strategic patience" of former US President Barack Obama whose government never requested his release, according to comments carried by the official KCNA agency.
Warmbier, 22, was arrested while visiting the reclusive country as a tourist. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel, North Korean state media said.
He was sent home last week suffering from brain damage and in what US doctors called a state of unresponsive wakefulness. He died on Monday.
Katina Adams, a spokeswoman for the US State Department’s East Asia Bureau, said Washington had repeatedly requested the release of Warmbier under the Obama administration.
A former senior State Department official said the United States had made repeated requests for Warmbier's release on humanitarian grounds under Obama, including via the North Korean mission at the United Nations, via the Swedish mission in Pyongyang, at unofficial talks with North Korean officials involving former US officials, and via third parties.
A US official said on Thursday that North Korea had conducted another test of a rocket engine believed to be linked to Pyongyang's ICBM programme."CLEARLY A CRIMINAL"
US President Donald Trump blamed "the brutality of the North Korean regime" for Warmbier's death. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who had advocated talks with the North, said Pyongyang had a "heavy responsibility" in the events leading up to the University of Virginia student's death.
The North's unnamed ministry spokesman said that such accusations were part of a smear campaign to slander the country that had given "medical treatments and care with all sincerity" to a person who was "clearly a criminal".
North Korea accepted repeated requests from the present US administration, the spokesman said, and repatriated the student on humanitarian grounds "in consideration of his bad health".
The exact cause of Warmbier's death remains unclear. Officials at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where he was treated after his return, declined to provide details. His family asked the local coroner not to perform an autopsy.
Thousands of friends and relatives gathered at Wyoming High School in suburban Cincinnati on Thursday for a memorial service for Warmbier, who graduated from the school as salutatorian in 2013.
After returning from a five-day trip to North Korea on June 17, former National Basketball Association star Dennis Rodman suggested on Friday that his visit may have had something to do with Pyonyang's decision to send the student home.
Rodman, who has faced ridicule and criticism for visiting North Korea in the past, has said he was trying to bring sports to the increasingly isolated country.
"I was just so happy to see the kid released," Rodman told ABC News in an interview. "Some good things came of this trip."
The United States has demanded North Korea release three other U.S. citizens it holds in detention: missionary Kim Dong Chul and academics Tony Kim and Kim Hak Song.
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