President Donald Trump said he takes Kim Jong-un "at his word" that he wasn't aware of North Korea's imprisonment and torture of US college student Otto Warmbier, who died after being detained for more than 17 months.
Trump told reporters that he had discussed the Warmbier case with Kim before the leaders' hastily adjourned second summit in Hanoi and that the dictator assured him he only learned of Warmbier's treatment after the fact.
American student Otto Warmbier died days after he returned to the US after being imprisoned in North Korea.Credit:AP
"In those prisons and those camps you have a lot of people, and some really bad things happened to Otto, some really, really bad things," Trump said. "But he tells me he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word."
Trump said Kim "felt bad" about the episode.
Warmbier was a 21-year-old University of Virginia student on a group tour when he was seized by North Korean authorities in January 2016, and accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster praising dictator Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un's father.
Trump said he took Kim at his word when the North Korean leader said he didn’t know about Warmbier’s treatment.Credit:AP
He was initially sentenced to 15 years of hard labour, but was returned to the US in June 2017 in a comatose state – brain dead, blind and deaf. He died shortly afterward in Ohio, his home state.
At the time, Trump called his treatment "a disgrace" and said that the North Korean government was a "brutal regime".
American authorities were told Warmbier had been in a coma for more than a year of his imprisonment, since April 2016 – two months after being forced to recite a videotaped confession in which he said he took the poster at the behest of the CIA and an Ohio church.
North Korea said Warmbier become ill from botulism, but American doctors found no evidence of that. A federal judge in December awarded $US500 million in damages to Warmbier's family in a wrongful death lawsuit against the North Korean government.
"What happened is horrible. I really believe something very bad happened to him, and I don't think that the top leadership knew about it," Trump said in Hanoi on Thursday.
As for Kim, specifically, Trump added: "I don't believe that he would have allowed that to happen. It just wasn't to his advantage to allow that to happen."
Trump’s defence of Kim mirrors his willingness to take the word of autocrats in other cases despite the findings of his own government or experts, particularly when confronting the leader is not what Trump sees as in his political interest.
His administration has been criticised for refusing to limit ties to Saudi Arabia or to overtly condemn Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for his alleged role in the murder of US-based columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul last year.
Trump has repeatedly said that the Crown Prince has denied any involvement in Khashoggi’s death while emphasising his own view that preserving the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia is most important.
“Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said of whether the Crown Prince knew of the plan to kill Khashoggi.
And Trump has sided with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his denial that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election – even though the US intelligence community has concluded that Russia did interfere as part of an effort to sow discord and help Trump.
“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said standing beside the Russian President during a joint news conference in Helsinki in July.
Bloomberg, Washington Post
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