WASHINGTON – A US judge on Monday ordered North Korea to pay $501 million over the death of American Otto Warmbier, concluding that the university student likely suffered torture.
The penalties, which North Korea is highly unlikely to pay willingly, come in the midst of a diplomatic drive by President Donald Trump who is seeking a potential landmark deal with leader Kim Jong Un.
The parents of Warmbier sued North Korea in a US court after the 22-year-old was flown back to the United States last year in a coma, unrecognizable to his family and died within days of his return.
Beryl Howell, the chief judge of the US District Court for Washington, DC, awarded $501,134,683.80 to the family, most of it in punitive damages.
“An American family, the Warmbiers, experienced North Korea’s brutality first-hand when North Korea seized their son to use as a pawn in that totalitarian state’s global shenanigans and face-off with the United States,” she wrote.
“North Korea is liable for the torture, hostage-taking, and extrajudicial killing of Otto Warmbier, and the injuries to his mother and father, Fred and Cindy Warmbier,” she wrote.
She said that North Korea did not submit any response to the lawsuit, which the family filed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a US law that allows lawsuits against foreign governments over offenses not considered to be covered by diplomatic immunity.
As one of the world’s most isolated countries, North Korea is believed to have few assets in the United States that could be seized to meet the judgment.
