North Korea has accused the USA of conducting a smear campaign against the regime over Otto Warmbier, the American student who was sent home in a coma after 17 months in prison.
Warmbier had been on a tourist trip to North Korea when he was detained and sentenced to hard labour early past year for allegedly stealing a political poster from a North Korean hotel.
US President Donald Trump has slammed Warmbier's detention and eventual death as "a total disgrace".
About 2,000 people packed into a school for Otto Warmbier's funeral Thursday in Wyoming, near Cincinnati. He will be buried at a nonsectarian cemetery.
The family maintain he died as a result of "awful torturous mistreatment".
Ria Westergaard Pedersen, 33, who was with Warmbier in North Korea, told the Danish broadcaster TV2 that he had been nervous when taking pictures of soldiers, and said she doubted North Korea's explanation for his arrest.
"I know being there had something to do with it", Volo added. Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years hard labor, but was sent home to OH on June 13 in a coma, dying days after his release, after spending 17 months in captivity.
The North's spokesman said such accusations are part of a smear campaign to slander the country that had given "medical treatments and care with all sincerity" to a person who was "clearly a criminal".
American doctors say he suffered brain damage and was in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness".
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Medical tests did not show what precipitated his injuries, but also found no evidence of the botulism infection that North Korea claimed was the cause of his coma. According to his family's wishes, no autopsy was performed.
Warmbier's friends and relatives described him as a bright young man beloved in his community.
"I was just so happy to see the kid released".
"He was the best guy I knew".
Still more lined roads in Wyoming, a small town of 8,000 residents, and in Cincinnati, where the 22-year-old was laid to rest. It's like going to like Istanbul, Turkey, or any place like that.
But after his parents say they heard nothing about their son for 15 months, the North Koreans last week allowed a State Department official to retrieve Warmbier.
"The US should ponder over the consequences to be entailed from its reckless and rash act", he added, possibly an allusion to the three Korean-Americans now imprisoned by North Korean authorities.
The authoritarian communist regime released the 22-year-old last week for what it described as humanitarian reasons and he died on Monday in a USA hospital.
On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said that U.S. patience with Pyongyang was running out.
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