American student Otto Warmbier's parents Fred and Cindy Warmbier applaud as U.S. President Donald Trump talks about the death of their son Otto after his arrest in North Korea during the State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. January 30, 2018. Otto Warmbier, who was a student at University of Virginia, was arrested by North Korean authorities in January 2016 for stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor. Warmbier, from Wyoming, Ohio, died at age 22 after being imprisoned in North Korea from January 2016 until he was returned to the United States in June 2017 in a coma. The action aims to hold Kim’s regime legally accountable for their son’s death, but the timing also raises significant geopolitical implications, coming weeks before an expected meeting between President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader in late May or early June. “Otto was taken hostage, kept as a prisoner for political purposes, used as a pawn and singled out for exceptionally harsh and brutal treatment by Kim Jong Un," his father Fred Warmbier said in a statement. "Kim and his regime have portrayed themselves as innocent, while they intentionally destroyed our son's life. This lawsuit is another step in holding North Korea accountable for its barbaric treatment of Otto and our family.”

The Warmbier family is represented by McGuire Woods, and a lead attorney in the case, Richard Cullen, also represents Vice President Mike Pence, who has also spoken out against the North’s treatment of Warmbier and its record of human rights abuses. In their lawsuit, Fred and Cynthia Warmbier said their son traveled to the North in Dec. 2015 as part of a program run by Young Pioneer Tours, “a China-based operator that catered to Westerners.”

Otto, according to the complaint, “believed this was an opportunity to understand how people lived in one of the only closed societies in the world.” But when the group attempted to depart after five days, Otto was detained at the Pyongyang airport “without explanation.” Four days later, the North conducted a successful test of a nuclear hydrogen bomb. He was released 17 1/2 months later in a deep coma, blind, deaf, with a wound on his foot and damage to his teeth, the lawsuit states. When his parents met him at the Cincinnati airport, Warmbier “had a shaved head, a feeding tube coming out of his nose, was jerking violently and howling, and was completely unresponsive to any of their efforts to comfort him.” North Korean officials disavowed responsibility, asserting that Warmbier had contracted botulism. “Although this is a private legal action to which the United States government is not a party, Americans remain committed to honoring Otto’s memory, and we will not forget the suffering of his parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier.”

Trump has eviscerated the North for its treatment of Warmbier, raising his death last fall during speeches at the United Nations in New York and to the South Korea general assembly in Seoul. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday as Secretary of State, traveled to Pyongyang over Easter weekend and met with Kim, and he reportedly raised the issue of detainees with North Korean officials.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier, the parents of detained American student Otto Warmbier, files a lawsuit against North Korea government, stating that Otto was "tortured and murdered", and also claimed that the DPRK "intentionally destroyed" their son's life.