Coroner: Otto Warmbier Wasn’t Tortured, Contradicting Trump, Parents
American student Otto Warmbier was imprisoned in North Korea for over a year. Image by youtube
(JTA) — An Ohio coroner said that a post-mortem examination of Otto Warmbier, the Jewish-American college student who died after being imprisoned in North Korea, did not show any obvious signs of torture.
The Wednesday statement contradicted President Trump and Warmbier’s parents, who claimed the 22-year-old was tortured by North Korea. Trump said Warmbier “was tortured beyond belief by North Korea.”
Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco, the Hamilton County coroner, painted a different picture.
“I felt very comfortable that there wasn’t any evidence of trauma” to the teeth or jawbone, Sammarco said Wednesday, according to CNN. “We were surprised at [the parents’] statement.”
Warmbier’s father, Fred, said Tuesday that his son’s “bottom teeth look like they had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged them.”
The parents opposed doing an autopsy on their son, so the coroner’s report and Sammarco’s statement were based on an external examination.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, which has denied torturing Warmbier, shot back at Trump, calling the president an “old lunatic” in a Thursday statement, BBC reported.
Warmbier died in the United States in June, days after after being sent back here in a coma. In 2016, North Korea sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor for stealing a propaganda poster while on a student tour there. North Korea released Warmbier, saying his health had deteriorated after a bout of botulism. Warmbier’s doctors in the U.S. said he suffered extensive brain damage.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
