But he was blind, deaf and shaking uncontrollably... I would say that's pretty bad torture.
I've read an article (written by Andrei Lankov, a Russian specialist on Korean studies) that explains the situation with Warmbier. (Didn't find an English version, but Lankov also writes in English so there may be one.) Briefly: it is very unlikely that he was tortured or something like that. They wanted to detain him then release like they already did to some American citizens. The conditions they're held in are much better than an average North Korean can count on, and the DPRK government demands a visit of a well-known politician (at least a governor, or even a former president) to release the prisoner(s). For example, in 2009, two American journalists were arrested for crossing the border and sentenced to 12 years of prison. But they were in prison only for few months, and were taken away by Bill Clinton personally. They do it to US citizens only - when an Australian Christian missionary tried to give away Bible on a street (on the holiday of Kim Jong Il's birthday!), he was only deported from the country. Plus, Chinese and Russian tourists in NK sometimes did worse things than Warmbier, but no incidents happened.
Why do they do it? First, to remind the guests of DPRK that they shouldn't get too cocky here. Second, such prisoners are handled with care and in relatively comfortable conditions, to show them (and others) that North Korea isn't as terrible as the world portrays it. But third, more importantly, the country gets visited by a representative of the US, and he has to bring some sort of apology for that the detainee has (allegedly) done. Such visits are widely covered in the North Korean press, and their propaganda portrays it as "
another victory of our great country and our Great Marshall Kim Jong Un over the American imperialists". Of course, such events increase the regime's popularity in the eyes of their people.
In Warmbier's case, they tried to do the same. But this time, something went wrong. Perhaps the guy had weak health, and after huge psychological stress he had after being sentenced to 15 years (that he wouldn't spend in a prison anyway), his condition became bad, and the medicine given by the North Korean doctors made it only worse. Or he unluckily hit the doorjamb with his head, or he tried to commit suicide in the prison - we don't know the details. But the fact is - the North Koreans messed up. They didn't want it to turn out that way, but now, the public suspects that Otto was tortured, which is most likely not true. But it'll be hard for NK to prove otherwise. An attempt to gain some propaganda points resulted in a catastrophe of their image to the world, and now (when the relations with the US are already too tense) is not the best time for this.
