North Korea Releases Video Surveillance Footage Of UVa Student Otto Warmbier, 21, Tearing Down The Poster That Got Him 15 Years In Prison

by Jesse L. / Mar 18, 2016 03:37 PM EDT

American student Otto Frederick Warmbier, center, is escorted out of the courtroom after his trial in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, on March 16.

Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea.

North Korean authorities released closed circuit camera footage on Thursday, that, though blurry, appears to show 21-year-old University of Virginia (UVa) student Otto Warmbier pulling a propaganda poster off the wall of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang.

Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a prison camp, following a one-hour trial, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.

"When I got off work, there was nothing amiss," a hotel staff member testified, according to the Daily Mail.

"But when I returned, I thought someone had deliberately taken the slogan down, so I mobilized security to prevent damage to it and reported it to the authorities."

White House spokesman Josh Earnest accused Kim Jong Un's government of using Otto Warmbier and other arrested US citizens in North Korea as "pawns to pursue a political agenda," Time reported.

"[We] strongly encourage the North Korean government to pardon him and grant him special amnesty and immediate release," Earnest said.

"The allegations for which this individual was arrested and imprisoned would not give rise to arrest or imprisonment in the United States or in just about any other country in the world."

The North Korean Supreme Court decision accuses Warmbier of acting on orders from the United States, "pursuant to the U.S. government's hostile policy toward [the North], in a bid to impair the unity of its people after entering it as a tourist."

The UVa economics major reportedly told reporters in Pyongyang before his court appearance Wednesday that he had been offered $10,000 to steal the poster and was told if he was captured a sum of $200,000 would be awarded to his family.

At a press conference three weeks ago, Warmbier, with tears in his eyes, read from a prepared statement.

"The aim of my task was to harm the motivation and work ethic of the Korean people. This was a very foolish aim," he said.