'We're the biggest victim': North Korea denies torturing US student Otto Warmbier during imprisonment

North Korea has said it is the "biggest victim" in a staunch denial it tortured a US student who died just days after being released by the regime.

The dictatorship denied torturing 22-year-old Otto Warmbier, who had been serving hard labour in North Korea after being accused of stealing a propaganda sign from a hotel.

He was sent to his home in Ohio on Tuesday, June 13, on “humanitarian grounds”, but died just six days later having been sent home in a coma.

His family accused North Korea of “awful torturous treatment”, while US President Donald Trump described Mr Warmbier as the “latest victim” of North Korean brutality.

Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) denied that North Korea cruelly treated or tortured Otto Warmbier and accused the United States and South Korea of a smear campaign.

Through statements on KCNA, North Korea said it dealt with him according to its domestic laws and international standards.

Relatives say they were told University of Virginia student had been in a coma since shortly after he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in North Korea in March 2016.

"Although we had no reason at all to show mercy to such a criminal of the enemy state, we provided him with medical treatments and care with all sincerity on a humanitarian basis until his return to the US ... considering that his health got worse," the agency quoted a spokesman of Pyongyang's foreign ministry as saying.

The spokesman also said that "groundless" speculation of torture and beatings could be refuted by American doctors who came to the North to examine Mr Warmbier before his release and allegedly acknowledged that North Korean doctors had "brought him back alive" after his heart nearly stopped.

While Pyongyang accepted US demands for Mr Warmbier's return on humanitarian grounds, Washington "totally distorted this truth and dared to clamour about 'retaliation' and 'pressure"' on "dignified" North Korea, the spokesman told KCNA.

"To make it clear, we are the biggest victim of this incident and there would be no more foolish judgment than to think we do not know how to calculate gains and losses," the spokesman said.

"The smear campaign against DPRK staged in the US compels us to make firm determination that humanitarianism and benevolence for the enemy are a taboo and we should further sharpen the blade of law," the spokesman added, referring to North Korea by its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The spokesman said it was a "mystery" as to why Mr Warmbier died days after returning home, but compared his death to the case of another American detainee, Evan Hunziker.

Mr Hunziker was detained in North Korea for months in 1996 for illegally crossing the border and committed suicide less than a month after he returned to the United States later that year.

The spokesman did not describe how Mr Hunziker died, but claimed that the United States then "totally ignored" his death.

Mr Warmbier was traveling in North Korea with a tour group, and was arrested at Pyongyang airport as he was about to leave.

He was sentenced two months later to 15 years of hard labour for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel, North Korea state media said.

Hundreds of people gathered at his funeral on Thursday.