US student sentenced to 15 years hard labour in North Korea 'flown home in coma'
An American student who was sentenced to 15 years hard labour in North Korea after stealing a poster has been flown home in a coma, his parents said.
Otto Warmbier has been medically evacuated after being in a coma for months, according to his family.
The announcement about the 22-year-old came as former NBA player Dennis Rodman made a return visit to the secretive state.
Mr Rodman is one of few people to have met both North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump.
However, he said the issue of several Americans detained by North Korea is "not my purpose right now", instead insisting he was "trying to open the door" to the isolated country through sports.
Fred and Cindy Warmbier said they had been told their son has been in a coma since March 2016 - when he was last seen in public, at his trial when he was sentenced to hard labour - and they had learned of this only one week ago.
"We want the world to know how we and our son have been brutalised and terrorised by the pariah regime" in North Korea, they said.
"We are so grateful that he will finally be with people who love him."
A North Korean foreign ministry official confirmed that Mr Warmbier had been released and had left the country on Tuesday morning.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the State Department had secured Mr Warmbier's release at the direction of the president.
Mr Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial in North Korea's Supreme Court in March 2016.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labour for subversion as he tearfully confessed that he had tried to steal a propaganda banner for a friend who wanted to hang it in her church.
The US government condemned the sentence and accused North Korea of using such American detainees as political pawns.
The North Korean court argued that Mr Warmbier had committed a crime "pursuant to the US government's hostile policy towards (the North), in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist".
In a tearful statement before his trial, Mr Warmbier told a gathering of reporters in Pyongyang he was offered a used car worth £7,800 if he could get a propaganda banner and was also told that if he was detained and did not return, more than £15,000 would be paid to his mother in the form of a charitable donation.
Mr Warmbier said he accepted the offer because his family was "suffering from very severe financial difficulties".