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North Korean court sentences Matthew Miller to six years' hard labour North Korean court sentences Matthew Miller to six years' hard labour
(35 minutes later)
North Korea's supreme court has sentenced US citizen Matthew Miller to six years' hard labour for entering the country illegally and trying to commit an act of espionage. North Korea has sentenced an American citizen to six years of hard labour for entering the country illegally and committing "hostile acts" against the secretive state.
The North's supreme court passed the sentence after a brief trial on Sunday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said in a short report. The court, which denied Miller permission to appeal, said the 24-year-old from Bakersfield, California, tore up his tourist visa at Pyongyang airport when he entered the country on 10 April and intended to "experience prison life so that he could investigate the human rights situation". State media said Matthew Miller had been convicted after a brief court hearing on Sunday morning. The court refused him permission to appeal.
"He committed acts hostile to [North Korea] while entering the territory of the [North] under the guise of a tourist last April," it said. Miller, 24, from Bakersfield, California, reportedly ripped up his tourist visa on arrival at Pyongyang airport on 10 April, claiming he wanted to seek asylum.
Photos of the trial released by state media showed some of Miller's possessions, including his passport and North Korean visa – which was ripped. Miller was also shown sitting in a witness box, flanked by soldiers. Prosecutors said Miller had falsely claimed to have secret information about the US military in South Korea on his iPad and iPod.
North Korea has yet to announce a trial date for Jeffrey Fowle, 56, from Miamisburg, Ohio, who was arrested in May for leaving a bible under a toilet in a sailors' club in the eastern port city of Chongjin. A photo released by the official Korean Central News Agency showed a pale-looking Miller, dressed in black, standing in the dock flanked by guards.
US missionary Kenneth Bae has been held by the isolated country since December 2012 and is serving a sentence of 15 years' hard labour for crimes North Korea said amounted to a plot to overthrow the state. Miller, who waived the right to a lawyer, was handcuffed and led from the courtroom after his sentencing.
The verdict came a week after the North set Miller's trial date and two weeks after a plea for help from Miller, Bae and Fowle. The US government had called on North Korea to release Miller and two other American detainees as a humanitarian gesture.
In a televised interview with CNN in Pyongyang, the three men pleaded for the US government to help them. This month Miller told US journalists who were in Pyongyang to cover an international wrestling event that he had written to Barack Obama requesting help but had not received a reply.
"My situation is very urgent," Miller said in the 1 September interview. "My situation is very urgent," he told CNN. "I think this interview is my final chance to push the American government into helping me."
"I think this interview is my final chance to push the American government into helping me," he added. Some analysts interpreted the North's unusual decision to permit the interviews as a sign that it may be prepared to negotiate the men's release.
North Korea has yet to announce a trial date for another US citizen, Jeffrey Fowle, who entered North Korea on a tourist visa and was detained after leaving a copy of a Bible in the toilet of a sailors club in the port town of Chongjin.
Fowle, from Moraine, Ohio, told AP in Pyongyang that he had been arrested at a hotel in the capital before being moved to a suite at a guesthouse. The 56-year-old and his Russian wife have written to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, asking for help.
Though it claims to protect religious freedoms, North Korea deals harshly with foreign tourists who use their visits to spread Christian teachings.
Kenneth Bae, an American missionary who was arrested in December 2012, is serving a 15-year sentence at a labour camp near Pyongyang for allegedly plotting to overthrow the regime. The US twice arranged to send its envoy for North Korean human rights issues, Robert King, to Pyongyang to negotiate Bae's release, only for North Korea to abruptly cancel the visits.
Bae, 46, has said he works eight hours a day at the camp, and that he has spent the 18 months since his arrest going back and forth between the camp and hospital to receive treatment for severe back pain.
All three men called on the US to send a high-ranking representative to North Korea in an attempt to win their freedom. Last week, US state department officials said the offer to send King was still open.
US officials appeared to be bracing themselves for a guilty verdict in Miller's case before his trial, with the country's most senior diplomat in east Asia, Daniel Russel, accusing the North of using the detainees as pawns.
"This is the way they play," he told Reuters. "They use human beings, and in this case Americans citizens, as pawns. And we find that both objectionable and distressing."
In the past, North Korea has used detained US citizens to secure visits by high-profile public figures. While ostensibly humanitarian missions, the regime sees such visits as a rare opportunity to push for concessions on its nuclear weapons programme. Six-party talks on the North's nuclear ambitions have not been held since 2009.
In 2010, Jimmy Carter secured the release of Aijalon Gomes, who had entered North Korea illegally to perform missionary work. A year earlier Bill Clinton did the same for two TV journalists who had strayed across the country's border with China.
Analysts said the strategy could prove less effective given that US foreign policy priorities now lay elsewhere. "North Korea's strategy may have worked in the past, but its brinkmanship with the American hostages is occurring against the backdrop of so many other crises that North Korea cannot use this issue to elevate itself as Washington's primary concern," Scott Snyder, director of the programme on US-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, told AP.