US student, freed from North Korea with neurological injury, was 'brutalized' — father

CINCINNATI - An American university student who was detained for 17 months in North Korea and suffered a serious neurological injury was "brutalized" by the reclusive regime, his father said on Thursday.

Despite the "severe" injury, Otto Warmbier, 22, is stable and receiving treatment at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, center spokeswoman Kelly Martin said at a news briefing at Warmbier's high school in Wyoming, Ohio.

Doctors are scheduled to provide further details about Warmbier's condition on Thursday afternoon.

Warmbier has been in a coma since March 2016, shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea, the family said on Tuesday after he was released. He was arrested for trying to steal an item with a propaganda slogan, according to North Korean media.

Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was "brutalized and terrorized" by the North Korean regime, his father Fred Warmbier said at the news conference, two days after his son arrived in Ohio on a medical evacuation flight.

North Korea's official KCNA news agency said in a one-line report on Thursday the student was "sent back home on June 13, 2017 on humanitarian grounds according to the adjudication made on the same day by the Central Court of the DPRK."

Fred Warmbier said the family did not believe North Korea's story, that their son had fallen into a coma after contracting botulism and being given a sleeping pill.

"We don't believe anything they (North Korea) say," Fred Warmbier said.

'STUNNED'

Fred Warmbier said he was stunned when he was told of his son's condition one week ago.

"Disbelief. Couldn't sit down. I don't know what being in shock is, but I'm pretty sure I was," he said, referring to the family being informed that Otto Warmbier was in a coma.

The New York Times previously cited a senior U.S. official as saying Washington had received intelligence reports that Warmbier had been repeatedly beaten while in North Korean custody.

Fred Warmbier said of his son's release: "They did not do this out of the kindness of their hearts."

U.S. President Donald Trump spoke to Fred Warmbier on Wednesday night, Warmbier said. Trump discussed how U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Joseph Yun, the U.S. State Department's special envoy on North Korea, worked together to help secure Otto's release, Warmbier said. — Reuters