Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced Tuesday that North Korea released Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate student, who had been serving a 15-year prison term with hard labor since March 2016 for allegedly trying to take a propaganda banner. "We are so grateful that he will finally be with people who love him".
For over a year, Warmbier was deprived of his most basic of human rights as the poor student was innocently caught in the cross-hairs of North Korea's continued acts of provocation against the United States.
In Tokyo, a visiting senior USA official said Rodman is making the trip as a private citizen.
Trump, after speaking with Tillerson, directed that a plane carrying Yun and medical personnel be sent to Pyongyang, telling - not asking - the North Koreans that it was going to land and that Warmbier must be seen, a senior administration official said.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed the release, and said Washington remains in talks with the isolated regime "regarding three other U.S. citizens reported detained".
Tillerson told U.S. senators at the start of a budget hearing that the State Department had no comment on Mr Warmbier's condition, "out of respect for him and his family". With concern mounting over Warmbier's deteriorating condition since the State Department learned of it in early June, a delegation arrived in Pyongyang on June 12 that included a State Department representative and a medical team. Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March of 2016 after being accused of attempting to steal a propaganda poster from his Pyongyang hotel while visiting the country. His parents say he has been in a coma and was medically evacuated. It was created by Pyongyang and Washington in the first place and now it is the USA that holds the key to the final solution.
Americans are regarded as enemies in North Korea because the two countries never signed a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War.
Later, Tillerson said at the start of testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "We have no comment on Mr. Warmbier's condition, out of respect to him and the family".
But Nauert is firm in stating "Dennis Rodman had nothing to do with the release of Mr. Warmbier".
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The White House official was not authorized to speak on the record about the sequence of events and requested anonymity.
At the meeting, North Korea agreed that Swedish diplomats could visit all four American detainees, which at that time included Warmbier.
Yun arrived on Monday, visited Warmbier with two doctors and demanded his release, the official said.
A White House official said Trump had instructed Tillerson to take all appropriate measures to secure the release of Americans held in North Korea. Moreover, Rodman himself said in advance that he was not intending to discuss the Americans detained by the regime. Yun then met last week with the North Korean ambassador at the U.N.in NY, where Yun learned about Warmbier's condition. "Fred, Cindy, and the Warmbier family have been remarkably strong throughout this ordeal".
Republican Senator Rob Portman says North Korea should be "universally condemned for its abhorrent behaviour". Secretary of State Tillerson said Tuesday, June 13, 2017, that North Korea released the jailed US university student.
Dennis Rodman, the former National Basketball Association bad boy who has palled around with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, flew back to Pyongyang on Tuesday for the first time in Donald Trump's presidency.
For more than a year, 22-year-old Otto Warmbier has been in a coma after taking a sleeping pill while fighting off food poisoning, according to The Associated Press. It is imperative that the State Department continue its efforts to secure their release.
On Tuesday morning, Tillerson reported to Trump that Warmbier is on the way home, and the last instruction Trump gave was: "Take care of Otto", the paper quoted a senior administration official as saying.
In a tearful statement before his trial, Warmbier told a gathering of reporters in Pyongyang he was offered a used auto worth $10,000 if he could get a propaganda banner and was also told that if he was detained and didn't return, $200,000 would be paid to his mother in the form of a charitable donation.
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