The parents of the US college student Otto Warmbier have sued North Korea over their son’s death in 2017 following his release from captivity there, according to the lawsuit, which said their son was “brutally tortured and murdered”.

The wrongful-death suit was filed in US district court at a diplomatically delicate time, just weeks ahead of an expected meeting between the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and Donald Trump. Kim and the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, also are set to meet on Friday.

“Otto was taken hostage, kept as a prisoner for political purposes, used as a pawn and singled out for exceptionally harsh and brutal treatment by Kim Jong-un,” his father, Fred Warmbier, said in a statement.

Warmbier, from Wyoming, Ohio, died at age 22 after being imprisoned in North Korea from January 2016 until he was returned to the United States in a coma. He died a few days later, and an Ohio coroner said the cause was lack of oxygen and blood to the brain.

North Korea blamed botulism and ingestion of a sleeping pill and dismissed torture claims. The coroner who examined Warmbier said he had found no sign of botulism.

The suit by Fred Warmbier and his wife, Cindy, seeks unspecified damages.

“North Korea, which is a rogue regime, took Otto hostage for its own wrongful ends and brutally tortured and murdered him,” the lawsuit said.

North Korea does not have an embassy in the United States. A representative of the North Korean mission to the UN in New York was not immediately available to comment.

Otto Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, was part of a travel group. When the group tried to leave North Korea after five days, he was held at the airport.

The filing says Warmbier was forced to make a false statement, confessing to invented charges that he was acting as a spy connected to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary of homeland security, said North Korea had immunity from lawsuits as a sovereign nation but still might be sued because of its US designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“But it’s almost impossible to collect any judgment that might be awarded. So it’s doubtful North Korea will feel sufficiently threatened by the lawsuit to upset the talks. And after all, he [Kim] can settle claims against North Korea in any US-North Korea agreement,” Baker said by email.

Kim is set to cross the heavily militarized border on Friday for the first summit with South Korea, setting the stage for him to meet with Trump in late May or early June.

Just months ago, Trump and Kim traded threats and insults during North Korea’s rapid advances in pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles capable of hitting the US.



But this month it emerged that the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, had a secret meeting with the North Korean leader as part of an effort to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and Kim.

On Thursday, the US Senate confirmed Pompeo to be secretary of state, and the White House released two photographs of him shaking hands with Kim.

