“I’ve never been there but from what I know; the conditions are harsh for the people of NK so it stands to reason they would be triple harsh for any prisoners and double that for an American prisoner.”
Americans are incredibly naive about the conditions in foreign prisons. While I was stationed in Okinawa, I was tasked with being the USMC observer during the trial of an enlisted man who, while drunk in town, decided to “roll” a drunk Okinawan man.
Their territory, their rules. Neither the USA nor the USMC had any say during the trial. I reported what I observed, but unless things got really outrageous, the US Embassy would not intervene.
I was told that unless he had someone bringing him food from the outside, he’d have a had time surviving the two year sentence.
There used to be a show called “Locked up Abroad”——most frightening thing ever.
Real hellholes in some countries.
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Helpful post. Maybe he got botulism from food.
So true! I took a stroll around a place called "The Compound" while in a city in Turkey. This place was filled with women who had committed some crime but not so bad that they had to die in a Turkish prison. I'm sure everyone remembers "Midnight Express". These ladies had a second choice; work as a prostitute in The Compound. Given those two choices; I'm not sure which one I would have chosen but the ladies didn't look underfed. I don't know how much freedom of movement they had but I'm sure if they tried to leave without permission they would have been thrown in the regular prison or even executed. This was during the 70's and while much of Turkey was far more westernized; they still had the same harsh laws on the books. I think this is why their cities were relatively safe at the time.
My point is any young stubborn man who felt unjustly imprisoned might cop an attitude. In an American prison he might get some kind of punishment but not usually a beat down or other physical punishment. This isn't the deep south of 50's. Otto might have done something a group of other prisoners had to pay for in some way (less food for instance) so they might have messed him up. We will likely never know. He's dead and that's that.