A 22-year-old University of Virginia student who spent 17 months in a North Korean jail has died in a US hospital just days after being released from captivity in a coma.
Otto Warmbier was visiting North Korea as a tourist last year when he was arrested for attempting to steal a propaganda poster. He went on to be sentenced to 15 years hard labour and his family say he slipped into a coma shortly afterwards in March 2016.
Last week North Korea repatriated Warmbier "on humanitarian grounds" to his hometown of Ohio after a visit by US State Department special envoy on North Korea Joseph Yun, who demanded the student by released.
Doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Centre who cared for him said he had suffered extensive brain damage that left him in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness." He had also showed no sign of understanding language or awareness of his surroundings and made "no purposeful movements or behaviours".
The Warmbier family confirmed on Monday that he had died.
"Unfortunately, the awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today," the family said in a statement after Warmbier's death at 2.20pm on Monday (local time).
There was no immediate word from Warmbier's family on the precise cause of his death.
The circumstances of his detention in North Korea and what medical treatment he may have received there remained a mystery, but relatives have said his condition suggested that he had been physically abused by his captors.
The North Korean mission to the United Nations has not yet commented on Warmbier's death.
US President Donald Trump issued a statement offering condolences to the Warmbier family and denouncing "the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim."
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson vowed to hold North Korea to account for Warmbier's death, plus work to released three other "illegally detained" Americans.
Trump drew criticism in May when, in an interview with Bloomberg, he said he would be "honoured" to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
"If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honoured to do it," Trump said in the interview. "If it's under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that."
Warmbier's father, Fred Warmbier, last week said his son had been "brutalised and terrorised by the Pyongyang government and that the family disbelieved North Korea's story that his son had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.
Doctors who examined Otto Warmbier after his release said there was no sign of botulism in his system.
Tensions between the United States and North Korea have been heightened by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since the beginning of last year. Pyongyang has also vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the US mainland.
Susan Thornton, the US acting assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said earlier on Monday that the US is concerned for the welfare of the three other US citizens still held in North Korea - Korean-Americans Tony Kim, Kim Dong Chul and Kim Hak Song.
Jonathan Bae, whose father, Korean-American missionary Kenneth Bae spent two years in North Korean captivity before his release in 2014, expressed sadness at Warmbier's death.
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