The parents of Otto Warmbier issued a strong statement Friday blaming Kim Jong Un for their son’s death a day after President Trump refused to fault the North Korean dictator for the torture, imprisonment, and eventual death of the American college student.

“We have been respectful during this summit process,” Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in their statement Friday. “Now we must speak out.”

“Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity,” the pair said. “No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”

During a press conference Thursday, following the abrupt end to their nuclear summit in Vietnam, Trump said he believed Kim when he told him that he had no knowledge of the inhumane treatment that Warmbier was subjected to during his 17-month detainment in North Korea.

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



Trump said he didn’t think that “the top leadership knew about it.”

“I don’t believe that [Kim] would have allowed that to happen. It just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen,” Trump said. “Those prisons are rough, they’re rough places, and bad things happened. But I really don’t believe that he — I don’t believe that he knew about it.”

Trump has also praised the North Korean dictator as being “very smart” and “a real leader.”