Contradicting Trump, Otto Warmbier's parents blame North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the death of their son - NBC News

Breaking News Emails

Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

March 1, 2019, 2:58 PM GMT / Updated March 1, 2019, 3:05 PM GMT

By Elisha Fieldstadt

The parents of Otto Warmbier issued a blistering statement on Friday saying Kim Jong Un and his government "are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity" after President Donald Trump asserted that the North Korean dictator had been unaware of the harrowing treatment the student endured while detained there.

"We have been respectful during this summit process. Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto," Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in a statement. "Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that."

Warmbier was arrested for taking a propaganda banner from a hotel while on a visit to Pyongyang in January 2016. The University of Virginia student from Ohio was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, but was released after 17 months.

Warmbier, 22, died shortly after he returned to the U.S.

American student Otto Warmbier, center, is escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea on March 16, 2016. North Korea's highest court sentenced Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student, from Wyoming, Ohio, to 15 years in prison with hard labor on Wednesday for subversion. He allegedly attempted to steal a propaganda banner from a restricted area of his hotel at the request of an acquaintance who wanted to hang it in her church.Jon Chol Jin / AP

His parents were told he had been in a coma since not long after he was sentenced. When he was brought back to Cincinnati after his release, his father said he "was jerking violently, making these inhuman sounds.”

“He was blind, he was deaf," Fred Warmbier had said.

Trump said Thursday that Kim was not responsible for and had no knowledge of the of the horrific treatment Warmbier suffered while he was detained in the country for 17 months.

"Some really bad things happened to Otto — some really, really bad things. But he tells me that he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word," Trump said, referring to Kim.

"I really don't think it was in his interest at all," he added at a press conference following the collapse of a nuclear summit in Hanoi.

Kim "knew the case very well, but he knew it later," Trump said.

Trump's statements were met with backlash from both sides of the aisle.

Last year, an American judge ruled Warmbier's parents were entitled to more than $500 million in damages from North Korea's government.