SEOUL – North Korea’s supreme court has sentenced
American student Otto Warmbier to 15 years of hard labour for crimes against
the state, China’s Xinhua news agency reports.

Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was detained
by the North in January for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan
from his hotel in Pyongyang and had confessed to crimes against the state, North
Korean media said previously.

Warmbier, who is from Wyoming, Ohio, and was 21 at the
time of his arrest, told a media conference in Pyongyang last month that his
crime “is very severe and pre-planned.”

He was at the end of a five-day New Year’s group tour of
North Korea when he was delayed at airport immigration before being taken away
by officials, according to the tour operator that had arranged the trip.

North Korea has a long history of detaining foreigners
and has used jailed Americans in the past to extract high-profile visits from
the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.

North Korea is also holding a Korean-Canadian Christian
pastor it sentenced to hard labour for life in December for subversion.

It has previously handed down lengthy sentences to foreigners
before freeing them.

In 2014, North Korea released three detained Americans.

Former Governor of New Mexico, who had previously
travelled to North Korea, met the North’s ambassador to the United Nations on
Tuesday to press for the release of Warmbier, the New York Times reported.

“I urged the humanitarian release of Otto, and they
agreed to convey our request,” Richardson was quoted as saying.”

– Reuters