Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption US student Otto Warmbier said he was "a poor scapegoat" before he was jailed in 2016

US student Otto Warmbier has been freed from jail in North Korea, but his parents say he has been in a coma for a year. “At the direction of the President, the Department of State has secured the release of Otto Warmbier from North Korea,” Tillerson said in a statement. The Warmbier family told US media they had found out only last week that their son has been in a coma since shortly after his trial in March 2016. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said he hoped the privacy of Warmbier’s family would be respected “in the weeks and months ahead.”

In a statement, he said: “My first priority will be continuing to support Otto, his parents and family, whose strength and love of family inspire me every time I speak with them. The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made no mention of Mr Warmbier's condition in a statement, saying only that he was on his way home to be reunited with his family and would not make any further comment, out of respect for the privacy of the family. The University of Virginia student was initially detained in January of 2016, accused of trying to steal a propaganda banner at his Pyongyang hotel. The University of Virginia, the school where Warmbier was a student before his imprisonment, said it was "deeply concerned and saddened to learn from his family that he is in a coma." Speaking to reporters in Beijing before his arrival in Pyongyang on Tuesday, he said that the issue of several Americans detained by North Korea is “not my purpose right now.”

In March 2016, North Korea’s highest court sentenced Warmbier to 15 years in prison with hard labor for subversion as he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner. “Otto’s detainment and sentence was unnecessary and appalling, and North Korea should be universally condemned for its abhorrent behavior. US officials then urged those with the ability to persuade Pyongyang to ratchet up the pressure to get him released, the source said. He said that over the past 18 months, Warmbier’s family has “had to endure more than any family should have to bear.” He said Warmbier’s sentence was “unnecessary and appalling.”

In the past, North Korea has held out until senior U.S. officials or statesmen came to personally bail out detainees, all the way up to former President Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2009 secured the freedom of American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. When asked if he would bring up the cases of Warmbier and three other Americans detained in North Korea, Rodman told reporters, “that’s not my purpose right now … My purpose is to go over there and try to see if I can keep bringing sports to North Korea.”

A source familiar with the government’s efforts to free Warmbier says the State Department learned about the student’s medical condition about a week ago. U.S. tourism to North Korea is legal, but the U.S. State Department strongly advises against it. He tearfully confessed to being “lured by the United States administration to commit a crime in this country.”

It’s not clear if he was forced to speak by the North Koreans. Despite the increasingly hostile US-North Korean relationship, the Warmbiers said they were encouraged by US President Donald Trump’s willingness to improve relations with North Korea.
After over a year in North Korean prison, the government releases the one-year comatose Otto Warmbier after negotiations from the United States Department of State.