Otto Warmbier's parents speak for first time since son's murder

The parents of Otto Warmbier, the 22 year old student who died this past June after being held and brutally tortured by North Korea for 17 months, held the first televised interview since their son's death on Fox News Tuesday,

Fred Warmbier, Otto's father, said that they decided to give the interview now after hearing North Korea "claiming to be a victim, and that the world is picking on them."

"We're here to tell you: North Korea is not a victim. They're terrorists. They kidnapped Otto. They tortured him. They intentionally injured him," he said. "We're here to tell the story of what it was like when we met Otto at the airport."

Cindy Warmbier, Otto's mother, said that when they heard that their son had suffered brain damage, "we thought he was in a coma, but you couldn't call it a coma."

"What we pictured, because we’re optimists, is that Otto would be asleep and maybe in a medically induced coma and then when our doctors here would work with him and he’d get the best care and love that he would come out of it," she said.

Fred explained how Otto's condition was infinitely worse than they had imagined when they finally reunited with him.

“We walked over to the plane. The engines were still humming. They had just landed. We walked up the steps. When we got halfway up the steps we heard this howling, involuntary, inhuman sound,” Fred said. “We weren’t really certain what it was.”

"We climbed to the top of the steps, and we looked in, and Otto was on the stretcher across in the plane. And he was jerking violently, making these inhuman sounds. Cindy and Gretta ran off the plane. Austin and I walked over to Otto. Otto had a shaved head, he had a feeding tube coming out of his nose, he was staring blankly into space, jerking violently. He was blind. He was deaf. As we looked at him and tried to comfort him it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth," we said.

Fred said that North Korea must be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. "We owe it to the world to list North Korea as a state sponsor of terror."