Pentagon chief blasts North Korea over death of US student

James Mattis says US patience with Pyongyang running out, as incident shows lack of ‘humanity, responsibility towards any human being’

By AFP 22 June 2017, 1:07 am

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US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis stands in front of a map of the Middle East during a press briefing at the Pentagon on May 19, 2017. (AFP Photo/Saul Loeb)

WASHINGTON, United States — North Korea’s treatment of an American student who died after being released from detention in a coma was inhumane and US patience with Pyongyang is running out, Pentagon chief James Mattis said Wednesday.

Otto Warmbier, 22, suffered severe brain damage in North Korea and died on Monday following 18 months of captivity in North Korea after he was sentenced to hard labor for stealing a political poster from a hotel.

“To see a young man go over there healthy and, [after] a minor act of mischief, come home dead basically… this goes beyond any kind of understanding of law and order, of humanity, of responsibility towards any human being,” Mattis said.

“What you are seeing I think is the American people’s frustration with the regime that provokes and provokes and provokes and basically [is] playing outside the rules, plays fast and loose with the truth, that sort of thing.”

Otto Warmbier, center, is escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea, Wednesday, March 16, 2016. Warmbier, an American college student who was released by North Korea in a coma last week after almost a year and a half in captivity, died Monday, June 19, his family said. (AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin)

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly slammed North Korea over its treatment of Warmbier, who died within days of returning to the United States.

Parents Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in statement on the day of their son’s release that they wanted “the world to know how we and our son have been brutalized and terrorized by the pariah regime” and expressed relief he had been returned to “finally be with people who love him.”

Warmbier had been active in the campus Hillel at the University of Virginia and had visited Israel on a Birthright trip, according to Rabbi Jake Rubin, who headed the Hillel there.

Mattis was speaking alongside Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after the two met Chinese officials to discuss North Korea and other regional issues, including China’s continued military build up in the South China Sea.

“We had an open and frank dialog about what more can be done in areas of common interest,” he said.

Tillerson said “efforts continue” towards securing the release of three more American citizens that are still being “illegally detained” by Kim Jong Un’s regime in Pyongyang.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.