US student Otto Warmbier's death reminder of North Korea's barbaric regime: Haley

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley on Tuesday lashed out at North Korea over the death of a 22-year-old American student after he was freed by Pyongyang, saying his memory will serve as an “indelible reminder” of the “barbaric nature” of the regime’s dictatorship.

“Countless innocent men and women have died at the hands of the North Korean criminals, but the singular case of Otto Warmbier touches the American heart like no other,” Indian-American Haley said in a statement on the death of Otto Warmbier.

Warmbier was a student at the University of Virginia and had visited North Korea during a trip to China.

He was detained at the Pyongyang airport in early January in 2016 and charged with “hostile act” against the country’s authoritarian government for trying to steal a propaganda poster.

Warmbier was released from a North Korean prison last week and was sent back home in a coma, a condition he had been in for more than a year in a coma. He died yesterday at the Cincinnati hospital.

Haley said while Warmbier’s memory will always be a blessing to his family, “it will also serve as an indelible reminder to us of the barbaric nature of the North Korean dictatorship”.

She lashed out against the decades-long “inhumanity” of the North Korean regime, saying numerous investigations have been conducted and endless volumes have been written about how “that outlaw government has tortured and murdered generations of its own citizens”.