Otto Warmbier: How did North Korea holiday end in jail, and a coma?

Everyone in frame is smiling and laughing in the North Korean cold. Otto Warmbier, like the other tourists, launches a snowball, captured in slow motion on what appears to be a camera phone.

It's the kind of innocent fun you expect to be captured on a tour group holiday. Otto turns to his right, mouth wide open, laughing.

"This is the Otto I know and love. This is my brother," wrote Austin Warmbier, who released the video, which was shot during a three-night North Korea tour at the end of 2015.

Two months later, Otto would again appear on video, but in very different circumstances.

Head bowed and clutching a prepared "confession", the 21-year-old student walked out in front of North Korean TV cameras to speak, explaining why he had been arrested at the end of that tour, when everyone else had been allowed to leave.

Looming over him were the oversized portraits of North Korea's former supreme leaders, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

He wore a cream-coloured jacket and tie. Before speaking, he got up an offered a low bow.

Otto thanked the North Korean government for the "opportunity to apologise for my crime, to beg for forgiveness and to beg for any assistance to save my life".

He said he tried to steal a propaganda sign from a hotel as a "trophy" for a US church with the "connivance of the US administration" in order to "harm the work ethic and motivation of the Korean people".

Later, he would break down in tears: "I have made the single worst decision of my life, but I am only human."

Otto is now back in the US after 15 months of captivity in North Korea. But he is in a coma, cannot understand language and has severe brain damage.

In the year-and-a-half since he threw that snowball, the life of a young man full of promise has been permanently altered.

Much remains unknown about how Otto's health deteriorated. Doctors at Cincinnati Medical Center say they have seen no sign he was physically abused but they and his family also don't buy North Korea's story that he contracted botulism and fell into a coma after taking a sleeping pill.

But how did a brilliant student from an Ohio suburb with hopes of becoming an investment banker end up imprisoned in a pariah state? And why was he released in a coma?

Homecoming king

The Warmbiers hail from a small suburb called Wyoming in Cincinnati, Ohio, where father Fred owns a small company.

Otto attended the best high school in the state, and was prom and homecoming king.

He was not only popular but also studious - he graduated as Salutatorian (the second-highest ranking student in his year) - and a talented athlete. His football coach has said he was a gifted player and a natural leader.

Otto went on to study economics and commerce with a minor in global sustainability at the University of Virginia and flourished there, according to the Washington Post.

The newspaper interviewed Otto's classmates at their graduation ceremony in May, where #FreeOtto stickers were handed out. The 22-year-old was in his third year of university when he was detained in North Korea. This should have been his graduation too.

Friends described him as a "sports fan who can reel off stats about seemingly any team, a friendly Midwesterner who can break down underground rap lyrics (and craft some of his own), a deep thinker who would challenge himself and others to question their place in the world, a guy from an entrepreneurial family who ate half-price sushi, an insatiably curious person with a strong work ethic and a delight in the ridiculous," the paper reported.

Otto is said to have known long before his college peers what he wanted to pursue as a career: investment banking.

According to his LinkedIn profile, he sat on the committee of a student investment fund and travelled to London in 2015 to complete a course in advanced econometrics at the London School of Economics.

His studiousness - and interest in travel - were what took him to Asia. Otto had been set to study at a university in Hong Kong on a study abroad programme in January 2016 and decided to stop in North Korea on the way.

He went through a China-based company called Young Pioneer Tours, which boasts of providing "budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from".

'They decided to take an American'

Danny Gratton, from Staffordshire in the UK, shared a room with Otto during the three-night trip - they were the only two members of the tour group who were there on their own.

"From the second I met him we hit it off. He was very bright, intelligent and likeable," he told the BBC.

The night Otto is said to have tried to take the sign from within a staff-only area of the 1,000-room Yanggakdo International Hotel was New Year's Eve 2015, the second night of the tour.

Earlier, the group had taken a trip to the border with South Korea before returning, having a meal and taking a coach to Pyongyang's main square, where there was a big fireworks display. They had food and drank beer, Mr Gratton said.

However there was no rowdy behaviour - "It wasn't that sort of holiday," Mr Gratton said. "We toed the line." He said there was "no indication at all" that Otto had taken the hotel propaganda sign and he had not mentioned it.

The North Korean government has released grainy video footage showing a dark figure whose face cannot be seen removing a sign in a corridor.

Otto was taken away by guards as the pair went through immigration control at Pyongyang International Airport on 2 January 2016.

Image copyrightAFP/GETTY

Image captionOtto is accused of stealing a sign from the Yanggakdo hotel, seen on the left - but Danny told the BBC it "wasn't that sort of holiday". "We toes the line," he said

"We were the last two people to go through passport control. We handed over our passports and the guy pointed at Otto and pointed to the door. Two security guards came over and ushered him away," said Mr Gratton.

"I made an ironic comment. I actually said 'Well we won't be seeing you again'. He sort of laughed at me and that was the last we saw of him.

"They made the decision to take an American. It was just his time, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

'Terrorised and brutalised'

Later, once the remaining group arrived in Beijing, one of the tour guides is reported to have spoken to Otto on the phone, who said he had a "severe headache and wanted to be taken to the hospital", the Post reports, citing another passenger.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionOtto is transferred from a medical transport plane to an ambulance in Cincinnati

The BBC has contacted Young Pioneer Tours for comment.

North Korea only confirmed that Otto had been arrested weeks later, on 22 January. He gave his televised statement in late February and was given 15 years' hard labour, for crimes against the state, in March.

Observers said the sentence seemed unusually high for a foreigner and could be related to deepening tensions between North Korea and the US over the former's nuclear programme.

It's unclear what happened to Otto between his sentencing and the announcement of his release on 14 June by the US government.

But his father Fred says he slipped into the coma "the day after he was sentenced" - well over a year ago.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Image captionOtto's father Fred wore his son's jacket as he spoke to journalists

Speaking at a press conference wearing the same jacket worn by his son on the day he "confessed" in Pyongyang, he said the North Korean government had "brutalised and terrorised" Otto.

North Korea says it released him on "humanitarian grounds".

Intelligence agencies in the North might have kept the state of his health under wraps, including from top officials, out of fear, says Stephan Haggard, director of the Korea-Pacific Programme at the University of California, San Diego.

At some stage, someone would have realised "that the worst of all possible worlds is for the guy to die in custody", kickstarting a frantic diplomatic effort to get him out, he told the AFP news agency.

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionLocal businesses in Wyoming have also show their support

Dr Daniel Kanter, one of those looking after Otto in Cincinnati says he is in "a state of unresponsive wakefulness". He has not spoken but has "spontaneous eye opening and blinking", he said.

Respiratory arrest is believed to be the cause of the brain damage, but it remains unclear what caused it. There are no signs that Otto was beaten.

He is breathing on his own but has not spoken and, at the request of the family, doctors will not disclose a prognosis.

His family are happy he is "now home in the arms of those who love him", Fred Warmbier said. When the plane carrying Otto touched down on Tuesday evening, people gathered at the airport cheered.

"It's just been so long that he's been there that to hear he is actually coming home was incredible," his college roommate Emmett Saulnier told CNN before Otto arrived.

He was carried out with a tube attached to his nose, and sent straight to hospital by ambulance.

Image copyrightEPA

Image captionDr Kanter (C) says Otto is in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness"

The University of Virginia welcomed his return, but President Teresa Sullivan said the community was "deeply concerned and saddened" to learn of his condition.

"When I knelt down by his side and I hugged him and I told him I missed him and I was so glad he made it home," Fred Warmbier said of what he did when he first saw his son.

"These things are tough to process but he's with us and we're trying to make him comfortable and we want to be a part of his life."

BBC NEWS

Afghan soldier attacks foreign troops at base

An Afghan soldier has attacked foreign troops at a military base, with a number of US soldiers wounded.

The attack took place at a base in the north of the country on Saturday, an official confirmed to the BBC.

However, a spokesman for the US military command, based in the capital Kabul, dismissed earlier reports American soldiers had been killed.

They did say an unspecified number had been wounded when the Afghan soldier opened fire at Camp Shaheen.

The Nato-led Resolute Support mission said one Afghan soldier was killed and one was injured in the incident, which took place at about 14:00 local time (09:30 GMT).

The camp, in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, Balkh province, is the base of the 209th Corps.

The attack comes a week after an Afghan army commando shot dead three US special forces soldiers in eastern Afghanistan.

The Taliban claimed to be behind that attack.

The Taliban also said they were behind another attack in Mazar-e Sharif in April, when more than 100 Afghan soldiers were killed or wounded at the base.

The army said insurgents targeted those leaving Friday prayers at the base's mosque and others in a canteen.

BBC NEWS

Bill Cosby case: Judge declares mistrial after jury deadlock

A US judge has declared a mistrial in the Bill Cosby sex assault case after the jury remained deadlocked for days.

The seven men and five women were unable to reach a unanimous decision after some 53 hours of deliberations in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Mr Cosby, 79, is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004. His lawyers had argued the sex was consensual.

The US comedian could now face new proceedings.

He walks away from court a free man, but the prosecution has already said they are pursuing a fresh trial.

Dozens of women say he assaulted them, but statutes of limitation rules mean he was allowed to be tried for Ms Constand's allegation only.

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• The ticking clock for rape survivors

The veteran entertainer could have faced up to a decade in prison if found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault, which allegedly took place at his Philadelphia home 13 years ago.

Announcing the decision, Pennsylvania judge Steven O'Neill reminded Mr Cosby that he remains charged and on bail, despite the mistrial.

'Blinding power of celebrity'

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool, inside the courthouse, said Mr Cosby was expressionless when the decision was announced.

One of Mr Cosby's lawyers, Brian McMonagle, applauded the decision, saying: "The judge is right: justice is real."

"We came here looking for an acquittal. But like that Rolling Stone song says 'you don't always get what you want'. Sometimes you get what you need."

The district attorney who brought the charges, Kevin Steele, told reporters that the prosecution was seeking a retrial:

"We will evaluate and review our case. We will take a hard look at everything involved and then we will retry it. As I said in court, our plan is to move this case forward as soon as possible."

A lawyer representing many of Mr Cosby's accusers, Gloria Allred, said she was hoping the prosecution would try the case again.

"We can never underestimate the blinding power of celebrity but justice will come."

---

A blow for women's rights campaigners - BBC Aleem Maqbool, BBC News, North America correspondent

For the most part, his defence team worked on undermining the credibility of the woman who brought the allegations against him, saying they had kept in contact many times after the alleged assault.

For women's rights campaigners who have been here throughout the trial, they say it illustrates how the American justice system fails women who have been assaulted. They already feel that they can't come forward because their credibility will be torn apart, as has been the case with this trial.

But his reputation has undoubtedly been tarnished. For many they will have seen all those other women who couldn't bring their cases to trial - nearly 60 - with word that there are many more who never spoke out because they don't want to disrupt their lives. There's no question those stories have been read and will have seeped into people's consciousness here in America.

---

The jury had been instructed by the judge to work into the weekend to reach a verdict, after they first revealed that they were deadlocked on the case on Thursday.

But the panel returned again on Saturday to tell the judge they were still deadlocked on all three counts.

Some of the many women who accused Mr Cosby of drugging and assaulting them over a 40-year time span were present in court last week awaiting the verdict.

The accuser, Constand Andrea, took the stand during the trial, telling the court the assault had left her feeling "humiliated" by someone she considered a friend and mentor.

Mr Cosby, who faces at least four separate civil lawsuits, refused to testify at the trial.

BBC NEWS

London fire: 'Outrageous' lack of help for Grenfell tower victims

There are many things fuelling the anger felt here.

The catastrophic loss of life is the primary factor, of course. But there is also the fact that people are finding it very difficult to get any information.

There does not appear to be any central official point here on the ground where people can go to get answers and support. No marquee with "help centre" written on the side. No officials with lanyards guiding confused and desperate people to counsellors.

There has been a huge voluntary response, with local churches and others helping people.

Donations have flooded in - too many now - such is the public response.

And unseen officials are caring for those in hospital and working to find empty accommodation in which to house those left homeless.

And yet on the ground people speak of a total lack of coordination from the government and Kensington and Chelsea council.

Local residents' association representatives say some families are still sleeping on floors in centres around the Grenfell Tower four days after the fire.

'Absolute chaos'

They talk of absolute chaos. And they say what they regard as the inability of the local council to respond to their needs and concerns is "symptomatic of why we had this disaster".

Such is the total and utter lack of trust between residents and the officials in charge.

One of the things fuelling the anger here - perhaps the main thing - is the lack of a central point of contact for answers.

Crisis management at disasters around the world swings into action at varying speeds. But even in remote areas, international bodies have normally set up obvious local centres of support fairly soon after the event.

It has not happened in North Kensington.

Twenty-four hours after the 2010 Haitian earthquake, I arrived to find no international response to speak of.

But within another 24 hours that response was arriving and was significant there three days after the disaster - teams from around the world flying in, crisis centres and the United Nations in control of feeding points and housing solutions.

Yes, there were problems. There always are. But the centralised and visible response was in place days later in a relatively remote area.

That is what appears to be missing in the richest borough in one of the world's leading cities.

Kensington and Chelsea council's website refers to a "Family and Friends Reception" at the Westway Sports Centre, staffed by police.

People need visible and accessible emotional psychological and physical help and right now they say they are not getting it.

Many people here believe an affluent Conservative council failed to look after its poorest residents.

But one angry former resident of the tower, who moved out in October, said: "Right now the residents need housing and taking care of. The council have failed to do so.

"This is not about politics. It is about getting people what they need and deserve. It is an outrage."

There has been little trust between residents and the council over the years. They say their concerns about safety in the Grenfell Tower were not listened to - not acted upon.

Right now that lack of trust is deepening. And so is the anger.

First Secretary of State Damian Green told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Kensington council are absolutely doing their best.

"People want answers, people want someone on the ground. The new recovery taskforce that the prime minister is chairing has people from central government as well as from the council on the ground to answer all those perfectly reasonable questions.

BBC NEWS

London fire: 58 missing, presumed dead - police

A total of 58 people are dead or missing, presumed dead following the devastating fire at Grenfell Tower in west London, police have said.

Commander Stuart Cundy said that number "may increase". The BBC understands it could be around 70 people in total.

The recovery operation at the burnt-out block of flats, which was briefly stalled due to safety reasons, has resumed and could take weeks, he said.

Residents caught up in the fire have condemned the "chaotic" relief effort.

Commander Cundy appealed for anyone who managed to escape from the building to let authorities know they were safe.

Pictures and footage showing the inside of the tower will be released on Sunday to help people understand why the search was taking so long, he said.

Of the resumed search, he said: "As soon as we can, we will locate and recover loved ones.

• Latest updates: Anger mounting
• What we know so far
• May 'distraught' about fire
• Trauma counselling for tower firefighters
• Victims of Grenfell Tower fire named
• Lily Allen and the row over the death toll

The latest police update comes as the Queen reflected on the "sombre national mood" following tragedies in London and Manchester in recent weeks in her official birthday message.

In an unprecedented statement, the Queen said she had been "profoundly struck by the immediate inclination of people throughout the country to offer comfort and support to those in desperate need".

"Put to the test, the United Kingdom has been resolute in the face of adversity," she said.

'Bewildered and confused'

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa May has met victims, volunteers and community leaders in Downing Street.

As they left Number 10, one representative spoke to reporters briefly, saying they would not make a full statement yet.

"We will be making this in the community, with the community," he said. "We have had two-and-a-half hours with the prime minister in the last 48 hours and spoke about demands and what we expect."

In other developments:

• A minute's silence was observed by the Queen at the Trooping the Colour parade to remember the victims
• Mrs May's new taskforce, made up of central government and Kensington and Chelsea council representatives, met
• Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, led an adoration and mass in memory of the victims at St Pius X Church
• The Circle line and Hammersmith and City underground lines, which run close to the tower, are partly suspended at the request of fire chiefs following a "short-term risk of some debris falling onto the tracks"

The BBC's Matthew Price said senior members of the residents' association described an "absolute chaos" of "no organisation" from officials.

Some residents said they no longer want Kensington and Chelsea council involved in any way.

He added: "They do not believe they are capable of managing the response. Such is the total and utter lack of trust."

Reverend Mike Long, from Notting Hill Methodist Church, said people in the community were angry and bewildered, and had lots of questions.

"They feel they're not being listened to and what they have been saying has not been listened to, and they don't know how to be able to express those things at the moment," he told BBC Radio 4's Today.

The fire broke out at the 24-storey block, which contained 120 one and two-bedroom flats, shortly before 01:00 BST on Wednesday.

It tore through all floors of the building and took more than 200 firefighters 24 hours to bring under control.

BBC NEWS

Victims pull out of Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

Sex abuse victims have been "utterly marginalised" by an inquiry set up to help them, one of the victims claimed.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) is examining the extent to which religious groups and local authorities failed children.

Earlier this week a latest victims group - Survivors of Organised and Institutional Abuse (SOIA) - withdrew from the process.

The IICSA said it had "taken on board" a number of issues raised by SOIA.

SOIA said the group had taken the decision to withdraw "with regret" but said the inquiry was "not fit for purpose".

Set up in 2014, the inquiry has been beset by controversy, with three chairwomen stepping down, lawyers quitting and victims losing faith in the process.

'Darkest episodes'

One of the victims, Dr Phil Frampton, who grew up in Cornwall, said instead of being at the heart of the inquiry, survivors have been "utterly marginalised".

"This inquiry is not fit for purpose and has never been fit for purpose - we engaged to try to help it be fit for purpose, but it's actually going backwards," Mr Frampton said.

He said the Home Office had a "conflict of interest" and had failed to deal with abuse that had taken place, including in children's homes and approved schools it was responsible for prior to 1970.

"This is one of the darkest episodes in the country's history and if you've got people with conflicts of interest, they're never going to shine a torch into those dark places, for fear they'll see themselves," he said.

Dr Frampton has waived his right to anonymity.

More than 200 victims and survivors are involved in the inquiry, which was launched in 2014 by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May.

SOIA is the second victims' group to withdraw from the inquiry. Last September the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association announced it would be pulling out, having lost faith in an inquiry it believed was not independent.

Decision 'regretted'

"The heart of the inquiry is the big institutions who are using taxpayers' money to defend their institutions," Dr Frampton said.

"It is a callous and cold process the inquiry is inflicting on survivors."

The inquiry, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, involves 13 initial investigations into allegations against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces, public and private institutions and people in the public eye.

In a statement, IICSA said it regretted SOIA's decision to withdraw and would welcome the group or individual members back,

It said it had "taken on board" a number of issues raised by SOIA, adding that the "important work" of the inquiry would continue.

BBC NEWS

China's quantum satellite in big leap

The term "spy satellite" has taken on a new meaning with the successful test of a novel Chinese spacecraft.

The mission can provide unbreakable secret communications channels, in principle, using the laws of quantum science.

Called Micius, the satellite is the first of its kind and was launched from the Gobi desert last August.

It is all part of a push towards a new kind of internet that would be far more secure than the one we use now.

The experimental Micius, with its delicate optical equipment, continues to circle the Earth, transmitting to two mountain-top Earth bases separated by 1,200km.

The optics onboard are paramount. They're needed to distribute to the ground stations the particles, or photons, of light that can encode the "keys" to secret messages.

"I think we have started a worldwide quantum space race," says lead researcher Jian-Wei Pan, who is based in Hefei in China's Anhui Province.

'Messy business'

Quantum privacy in many ways should be like the encryption that already keeps our financial data private online.

Before sensitive information is shared between shopper and online shop, the two exchange a complicated number that is then used to scramble the subsequent characters. It also hides the key that will allow the shop to unscramble the text securely.

The weakness is that the number itself can be intercepted, and with enough computing power, cracked.

Quantum cryptography, as it is called, goes one step further, by using the power of quantum science to hide the key.

As one of the founders of quantum mechanics Werner Heisenberg realised over 90 years ago, any measurement or detection of a quantum system, such as an atom or photon of light, uncontrollably and unpredictably changes the system.

This quantum uncertainty is the property that allows those engaged in secret communications to know if they are being spied on: the eavesdropper's efforts would mess up the connection.

The idea has been developed since it was first understood in the 1980s.

Typically, pairs of photons created or born simultaneously like quantum twins will share their quantum properties no matter how long they are separated or how far they have travelled. Reading the photons later, by shopper and shop, leads to the numerical key that can then be used to encrypt a message. Unless the measurements show interference from an eavesdropper.

A network established in Vienna in 2008 successfully used telecommunications fibre optics criss-crossing the city to carry these "entangled photons", as they are called. But even the clearest of optical fibres looks foggy to light, if it's long enough. And an ambitious 2,000km link from Beijing to Shanghai launched last year needs repeater hubs every 100km or so - weak points for quantum hackers of the future to target.

And that, explains Anton Zeilinger, one of the pioneers of the field and creator of the Vienna network, is the reason to communicate via satellite instead.

"On the ground, through the air, through glass fibres - you cannot go much further than 200km. So a satellite in outer space is the choice if you want to go a really large distance," he said.

The point being that in the vacuum of space, there are no atoms, or at least hardly any, to mess up the quantum signal.

That is what makes the tests with Micius, named after an ancient Chinese philosopher, so significant. They have proved a spaced-based network is possible, as revealed in the latest edition of the journal Science.

Technical tour de force

Not that it is easy. The satellite passes 500km over China for just less than five minutes each day - or rather each night, as bright sunlight would easily swamp the quantum signal. Micius' intricate optics create the all-important photon pairs and fires them down towards telescopes on some of China's high mountains.

"When I had the idea of doing this in 2003, many people thought it was a crazy idea," Jian-Wei Pan told the BBC World Service from his office in the University of Science and Technology of China. "Because it was very challenging already doing the sophisticated quantum optics experiments in a lab - so how can you do a similar experiment at a thousand-kilometre distance and with optical elements moving at a speed of 8km/s?"

Additional lasers steered the satellite's optics as it flew over China, keeping them pointed at the base stations. Nevertheless, owing to clouds, dust and atmospheric turbulence, most of the photons created on the satellite failed to reach their target: only one pair of the 10 million photon pairs generated each second actually completed the trip successfully.

But that was enough to complete the test successfully. It showed that the photons that did arrive preserved the quantum properties needed for quantum crypto-circuits.

"The Chinese experiment is a quite remarkable technological achievement," enthused mathematician Artur Ekert in an e-mail to the BBC. It was as a student in quantum information at Oxford University in the 1990s that Ekert proposed the paired-photon approach to cryptography. Relishing the pun, he added wryly "when I proposed the scheme, I did not expect it to be elevated to such heights."

Alex Ling from the National University of Singapore is a rival physicist. His first quantum minisatellite blew up shortly after launch in 2014, but he is generous in his praise of the Micius mission: "The experiment is definitely a technical tour de force.

"We are pretty excited about this development, and hope it heralds a new era in quantum communications capability."

The next step will be a collaboration between Jian-Wei Pan and his former PhD supervisor, Anton Zeilinger in the University of Vienna - to prove what can be done across a single nation can also be achieved between whole continents, still using Micius.

"The idea is the satellite flies over China, establishes a secret key with a ground station; then it flies over Austria, it establishes another secret key with that ground station. Then the keys are combined to establish a key between say Vienna and Beijing," he told the BBC's Science in Action programme.

Pan says his team will soon arrive in Vienna to start those tests.

Meanwhile, Zeilinger is working on Qapital, a quantum network connecting many of the capitals of Europe, Vienna and Bratislava. Existing optic fibres laid alongside data networks but not currently used could make the backbone of this network, Zeilinger believes.

"A future quantum internet," he says, "will consist of fibre optic networks on the ground that will be connected to other fibre networks by satellites overhead. I think it will happen."

Pan is already planning the details of the satellite constellation that will make this possible.

The need? Secrecy is the stuff of spy agencies, who have large budgets. But financial institutions which trade billions of dollars internationally day by day also have valuable resources to protect.

Although some observers are sceptical they would want to pay for a quantum internet, Pan, Zeilinger and the other technologists think the case will be irresistible once one exists.

BBC NEWS