|
 North Korea's official KCNA news agency said on Friday that
Warmbier "was caught committing a hostile act against the state",
which it said was "tolerated and manipulated by the U.S.
government".
Charlotte Guttridge, a tour leader at Young Pioneer Tours and the
only outside witness to Warmbier's detention, said the 21-year-old
University of Virginia student was not with other tourists when the
events that appear to have prompted his arrest occurred.
"What happened, happened at the hotel and my belief is that Otto
kept it to himself out of hope it might go unnoticed," Guttridge
told Reuters.
Guttridge and colleagues at Young Pioneer Tours declined to share
further details of exactly what had taken place, citing the safety
of their client.
Warmbier had been staying at the Yanggakdo International Hotel when
the incident that led to his arrest occurred. The Yanggakdo is a
towering structure on an island in the middle of the Taedong river,
which cuts through central Pyongyang.
China-based Young Pioneer Tours is a North Korea travel specialist
that describes itself on its website as "an adventure tour operator
that provides 'budget tours to destinations your mother would rather
you stayed away from'".
 During his five-day New Year's tour of North Korea, staff at Young
Pioneer Tours said Warmbier had acted normally, and was keen to see
daily life in one of the world's most isolated countries, which is
visited by around 6,000 Western tourists a year. Ten other U.S.
citizens were on the tour.
"Throughout the trip, Otto behaved as a typical tourist - taking
pictures, enjoying himself. We had no indication that anything
untoward had happened until the airport," Guttridge said.
DELAYED AT IMMIGRATION
When Warmbier's group reached the airport, he appeared to have been
purposefully delayed at immigration, Troy Collings, director of
Young Pioneer Tours, told Reuters.
As the tourists checked-in at the gleaming, recently-renovated
terminal, Warmbier was taken aside by two airport officials and
escorted into a small immigration room behind a wooden door to one
side of the check-in area.
"He was not dragged away and he wasn't yelled at," Guttridge said.
As Guttridge waited for Warmbier to come out of the room, she
instructed the rest of her tour group to board the North Korean Air
Koryo flight bound for Beijing.
[to top of second column] |
"When it became clear that he wasn't coming, I had to board the
flight before it departed," said Guttridge, who still had colleagues
in Pyongyang with another group of tourists. "I was the last to
board the flight."
As the Russian-made Tupolev airliner prepared to leave the terminal,
an airport official boarded the plane and told Guttridge that
Warmbier had been "taken to hospital".
Soon after, a North Korean contact passed on a message concerning
Warmbier's detention to Young Pioneer Tours founder Gareth Johnson,
who was in Pyongyang with a separate group due to catch a train to
the Chinese border.
"I stayed back when I heard Otto had been detained," Johnson told
Reuters. "It was an automatic response. I wanted to try and work out
what the situation was and it was my hope that I would at least be
able to speak with him."
Johnson said his company was in contact with Warmbier's family, U.S.
officials and the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which represents
U.S. interests in North Korea.
Staff at the tour operator said as far as they knew Warmbier had not
been in possession of any religious or political literature. Foreign
visitors have been detained in the past for attempting to distribute
religious literature in the country. The U.S. and Canadian
governments advise against travel there.
The U.S. State Department, in a statement, said it was aware of
reports that a U.S. citizen had been detained in North Korea but
gave no further details, citing privacy concerns.
Calls to the Warmbier family home in Cincinnati, Ohio, were not
immediately answered on Friday and nobody answered when a Reuters
reporter knocked on the door of the house.
(Reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Alex Richardson)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
