{"id":23940,"date":"2016-03-16T02:19:17","date_gmt":"2016-03-16T02:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/north-korea-sentences-american-to-15-years-hard\/"},"modified":"2016-03-16T02:19:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-16T02:19:16","slug":"north-korea-sentences-american-to-15-years-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/north-korea-sentences-american-to-15-years-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"North Korea sentences American to 15 years&#8217; hard labour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{21-year-old gets 15-year punishment after allegedly trying to steal propaganda poster from his hotel.}<\/p>\n<p>North Korea&#8217;s highest court has sentenced an American tourist who allegedly attempted to steal a propaganda banner from a restricted area of his hotel to 15 years of hard labour in prison.<\/p>\n<p>Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student, was convicted and sentenced in a one-hour trial Wednesday morning at the North&#8217;s Supreme Court. He was charged with subversion.<\/p>\n<p>No further details were immediately available.<\/p>\n<p>Warmbier was arrested in early January as he tried to leave the country after visiting as a tourist with a New Year&#8217;s tour group.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement made before his trial, he told a gathering of reporters in Pyongyang he wanted the banner &#8220;as a trophy&#8221; for the mother of a friend.<\/p>\n<p>North Korea regularly accuses Washington and Seoul of sending spies to overthrow its government to enable the US-backed South Korean government to control the Korean peninsula.<\/p>\n<p>Warmbier was arrested while visiting the country with Young Pioneer Tours, an agency specialising in travel to the North, which is strongly discouraged by the US State Department.<\/p>\n<p>He had been staying at the Yanggakdo International Hotel, which is located on an island on a river that runs through Pyongyang.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-10970 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/50f1823bb201417d88eee7dba5959eb2_18.jpg\" alt=\"Otto Warmbier is escorted for sentencing to the Supreme Court in Pyongyang on Wednesday\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{21-year-old gets 15-year punishment after allegedly trying to steal propaganda poster from his hotel.} North Korea&#8217;s highest court has sentenced an American tourist who allegedly attempted to steal a propaganda banner from a restricted area of his hotel to 15 years of hard labour in prison. Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23940"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23940"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}