NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 09: Dennis Rodman Visits The FOX Business Network at FOX Studios on December 9, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Laura Cavanaugh/Getty Images)
Retired NBA legend Dennis Rodman is claiming credit for the release of American college student Otto Warmbier from a North Korean prison last week. Rodman told ABC’s Good Morning America that he did not know Warmbier, who passed away this past Monday, was sick when Pyongyang authorities freed him.
What Happened?
According to Rodman and his agent, Chris Volo, the duo personally lobbied the Pyongyang government to send Warmbier home.
“I asked on behalf of Dennis for his release three times,” Volo told ABC News.
“I know being there had something to do with it. Because when I was organizing the trip…and I meet with the delegates here, you know, I addressed…Otto Warmbier. And I said to them, ‘we…would need his…you know, a release, some type of good faith, if we’re ever going to do some type of future sports relations.
“They said they understood.”
Both the State Department and Warmbier’s father, Fred, deny that Rodman played any roll in the American’s release.
“Dennis Rodman had nothing to do with Otto returning to the United States,” Fred told GMA.
Warmbier was laid to rest in Wyoming, Ohio, on Thursday.
Rodman also revealed Friday that he reached out to the Warmbier family to arrange a meeting but was rebuffed.
“I was just so happy to see the kid released,” Rodman said. “Later that day, that’s when we found he was ill, no one knew that.”
Rodman landed in North Korea on Monday, June 12, the same day Warmbier was released in a coma. The 22-year-old died in an Ohio hospital on Monday after North Korea released him for what they described as humanitarian reasons.
Doctors concluded that he suffered a severe neurological injury from an unknown cause.
On Friday, North Korea denied torturing him in the state’s first reaction since Warmbier’s passing. The response came after South Korea blamed the North for his fat and President Donald Trump criticized his imprisonment and death as “a total disgrace.”
The University of Virginia student is thought to have been in a coma since he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for stealing a propaganda poster in March 2016.
Rodman says he wanted to “give all the prayer and love” to the Warmbiers.
Otto Warmbier
Otto Frederick Warmbier was an American university student who, while visiting North Korea as a tourist in January 2016, was arrested and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor after being accused of stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel lobby.
