Parents Sue North Korea Over College Student’s Death After Time in Prison

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WASHINGTON — The parents of Otto F. Warmbier, the Cincinnati college student who died after suffering a severe brain injury during 17 months in custody in Pyongyang, sued North Korea on Thursday, alleging that it kidnapped, tortured and murdered their son.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, throws a harsh spotlight on North Korea’s human-rights abuses weeks before President Trump is scheduled to meet with the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un. It also comes as the Trump administration is trying to win the release of three other Americans currently held there.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier, Otto Warmbier’s parents, contend that North Korea used their son as a pawn in a confrontation with the United States over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. They are claiming damages to be decided by the court.

“North Korea has repeatedly lied about the causes of Otto’s condition and refuses to acknowledge its abhorrent actions,” the 22-page complaint said. “In fact, North Korea, which is a rogue regime, took Otto hostage for its own wrongful ends and brutally tortured and murdered him.”

Under American law, private citizens are not eligible to sue foreign countries. But Mr. Trump placed North Korea on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism in November — restoring it to a list it had been on from 1988 to 2008. That opened it to lawsuits from victims of terrorism.

If the Warmbiers are awarded compensatory damages, they can draw from the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund, established by Congress to pay out claims, with a cap of $20 million per person, or $35 million for a group of plaintiffs.

The Warmbiers did not coordinate the lawsuit with the administration, but the White House expressed its support. “Americans remain committed to honoring Otto’s memory, and we will not forget the suffering of his parents,” said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary.

Another senior official said the administration was not worried that the suit would hamper its efforts to free the other Americans. On the contrary, the official said, the prospect of more such lawsuits might give Pyongyang the incentive to free the remaining detainees — three Korean-Americans who were arrested in 2016 and 2017 on suspicion of “hostile acts” against the North Korean state.

“They’ve been there a long time and it’s harsh treatment,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference last week, referring to the three detainees: Kim Hak-song, also known as Jin Xue Song; Tony Kim, also known as Kim Sang-duk; and Kim Dong-chul. He expressed guarded optimism about winning their release.

“We fought very hard to get Otto Warmbier back,” Mr. Trump added. “And when we came back, he was in very, very bad condition.”

The lawsuit details the abuse inflicted on Mr. Warmbier, 22, saying that after he was returned to Ohio in a coma, doctors diagnosed “an extensive loss of brain tissue” that was “caused by the cessation or severe reduction of blood flow to the brain.” He had a “scarred wound” on his left foot and his teeth had been misaligned, “forced into abnormal positions.”

When Mr. Warmbier’s parents boarded the plane that carried him to Cincinnati, the suit said, “they were stunned to see his condition.”

“Otto was blind and deaf,” the suit said. “He had a shaved head, a feeding tube coming out of his nose, was jerking violently and howling, and was completely unresponsive to any of their efforts to comfort him.”

The suit does not include new information or theories about what caused Mr. Warmbier’s injuries. It cites Mr. Trump’s statement in September 2017 that he was “tortured beyond belief by North Korea,” as well as a report in The New York Times in June, citing a senior American official, which said Mr. Warmbier had been repeatedly beaten.

Mr. Warmbier, a junior majoring in economics at the University of Virginia, was detained at the airport in Pyongyang on Jan. 2, 2016, as he tried to leave North Korea after a five-day visit to the country with a tour group. North Korean authorities accused him of ripping down a propaganda poster from a restricted area of his hotel in Pyongyang.

During a televised news conference a month later, Mr. Warmbier confessed to taking down the poster, saying he had done so at the behest of Friendship United Methodist Church near Cincinnati, which promised him a used car as payment. He also said he had been encouraged to do so by Z, a secret society at the University of Virginia that has ties to the C.I.A.

The lawsuit said Mr. Warmbier’s confession was coerced: He had no ties to the church or the secret society, and the Z Society, the suit said, is not linked to the C.I.A. The only genuine expression by Mr. Warmbier, it said, was his begging to be forgiven and returned to his family.

Two weeks later, a North Korean court convicted Mr. Warmbier of state subversion and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor. Video of the trial showed his hands “turned inward, in an unnatural position.” Doctors in Ohio said medical records supplied by North Korea indicated that he suffered his brain injury a month after his trial.

Mr. Warmbier’s parents have retained Richard Cullen, a politically connected former federal prosecutor and attorney general of Virginia. He also represents Vice President Mike Pence in the special counsel’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Among Mr. Cullen’s other clients are Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, and Elin Nordegren, the ex-wife of the golfer Tiger Woods.