North Korea on Friday accused the United States of waging a "smear campaign" over the death of a student who was sent back home in a coma, denying he was tortured or abused.
North Korea said today the death of Mr Warmbier, who was kept prisoner in the hermit state since last January, was "a mystery to us as well".
Then, just before he was to be medically evacuated, the North Korean regime revealed that Warmbier had been in a coma for much of his imprisonment.
But the reclusive country claimed it, not Warmbier, was the "biggest victim" in the case.
Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016 for stealing a propaganda poster from a Pyongyang hotel.
Suffering from severe brain damage, Warmbier died Monday in his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. His release was never requested, Pyongyang says.
His death fanned a conflict between the North and the United States that was already aggravated by North Korea's defiant missile launches and two nuclear tests since early previous year as part of its effort to build a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of hitting the US mainland.
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American student Otto Warmbier, center, is escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea.
Warmbier's parents say he became ill after he was imprisoned, and that the North Koreans claimed that he contracted botulism and fell into a coma after taking a sleeping pill. 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".
"As for groundless public opinion now circulating in the USA that he died of torture and beating during his reform through labor, the American doctors who came to the DPRK for repatriation of Warmbier will have something to say about it", said the DPRK spokesman.
"The smear campaign against DPRK staged in the USA compels us to make firm determination that humanitarianism and benevolence for the enemy are a taboo and we should further sharpen the blade of law", the spokesman added, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. University of Delaware Professor Katherine Dettwyler wrote on her Facebook page and in the comments section of a National Review article on the left's reaction to Warmbier's death.
KCNA didn't provide details of how Warmbier was treated or what might have caused him to lapse into a coma. His family declined an autopsy.
A public memorial for Warmbier was scheduled to be held Thursday morning at Wyoming High School, officiated by Rabbi Jake Rubin, the University of Virginia campus Hillel director who traveled with Warmbier to Israel, The Times of Israel reported. The US authorities advise their citizens not to visit North Korea as tourists given the high risk.
"I was just so happy to see the kid released. Some good things came of this trip".
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