North Korea says US student released 'on humanitarian grounds'

North Korea released US student Otto Warmbier "on humanitarian grounds", state media said today, two days after he was evacuated from Pyongyang after falling into a coma while imprisoned in a

labour camp.

The 22-year-old University of Virginia student from Cincinnati spent more than a year in North Korean detention after being arrested for stealing a political poster from a hotel. His family have said he was "terrorised and brutalised" by Kim Jong-Un's regime.

"Otto Frederick Warmbier, who had been in hard labour, was sent back home on June 13, 2017 on humanitarian grounds according to

the adjudication made on the same day by the Central Court of the DPRK," the state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a one-line statement.

Warmbier's release came after a flurry of secret diplomatic contacts between Washington and Pyongyang, which culminated in Joseph Yun, the State Department's special envoy on North Korea, travelling to Pyongyang to secure Warmbier's release.

"Joseph Yun went to Pyongyang to accompany Mr Warmbier home," Thomas Shannon, undersecretary of state for political affairs,

told reporters in Seoul on Wednesday.

The New York Times reported a senior US official as saying the authorities recently received intelligence indicating Warmbier was repeatedly beaten while in custody.

However, the father of the student says his son was "brutalized" by his captors.

Fred Warmbier told Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Wednesday from his Ohio home that his son, Otto, "is not in great shape right now." "Otto has been terrorized and brutalized for 18 months by a pariah regime in

North Korea," the father said in an interview scheduled to air on Thursday night.