North Korea sentences U.S. student to 15 years of hard labor

By Park Sae-jin Posted : March 16, 2016, 17:09 Updated : March 16, 2016, 17:09

[AJU NEWS CORP DB]



In a move seen to further escalate tension with the United States, North Korea's supreme court has sentenced a detained American student to 15 years’ hard labor after finding him guilty of “crimes against the state.”

The sentence was handed down on Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old economics student from the University of Virginia, by North Korea's Supreme Court, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported Wednesday in a brief dispatch datelined Pyongyang.

Warmbier was detained by the North in January for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel in Pyongyang and had confessed to crimes against the state, North Korean media reported last month. .

Warmbier’s conviction by the North’s supreme court comes at a sensitive time, as the United States took a leading role in securing a new round of U.N. sanctions in response to the North’s recent nuclear test and rocket launch.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen in recent weeks following the start of the largest-ever joint military exercises involving American and South Korean troops. In response, Pyongyang has threatened to carry out tests of another nuclear warhead, as well as ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear bombs to the US and other targets.

North Korea has a long history of detaining foreigners and has used jailed Americans in the past to extract high-profile visits from the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.

It has previously handed down lengthy sentences to foreigners before freeing them.

Warmbier had entered North Korea as part of a New Year tour organised by China-based Young Pioneer Tours. He was arrested when the group was set to return to Beijing on January 2.

He is one of three North Americans currently detained in North Korea, which recently sentenced a 60-year-old Canadian pastor to life imprisonment with hard labour on sedition charges.

Detained foreigners are often required to make a public, officially-scripted acknowledgement of wrongdoing, and Warmbier was paraded in front of reporters and diplomats in Pyongyang last month.

Footage of the event showed a sobbing Warmbier pleading to be released and saying he had made "the worst mistake of my life".

By Alex Lee
 
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