American student Otto Warmbier may have attempted suicide in North Korea

Otto Warmbier, the US student who was imprisoned in North Korea and died six days after returning to America, may have attempted to take his own life.

That is the bombshell claim from a new report in GQ magazine by Doug Bock Clark who accuses US President Donald Trump of promoting the torture stance to justify his tough stance against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Author Doug Bock Clark. Photo / Twitter

American student Otto Warmbier, centre, is escorted at the Supreme Court in Pyongyang, North Korea in March last year. Photo / AP

Warmbier was arrested for stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15-years hard labour during a North Korean tour in January 2016

When he was returned to the US on June 13, 2017 he was in a vegetative state and had brain damage. He died six days later.

Cindy Warmbier holds a photo of Otto as a child. Photo / Maddie McGarvey / The Washington Post

North Korea blamed his state on food poisoning but Bock Clark, who studied the case for six months, says a report by Dr Lakshmi Kode Sammarco found Warmbier's brain had been damaged on both sides, indicating that it had been starved of oxygen rather than hurt by an impact to the head.

The report also found no significant scars, and found his teeth were "natural and in good repair".

Bock Clark states that while Mr Trump used Warmbier's case in his State of the Union address in January, when he met with Kim in June, he didn't even mention the US student's torture because the case had "outlived its usefulness".

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump shake hands at the conclusion of their meetings recently. Photo / AP

Fred and Cindy Warmbier maintain that their son was tortured.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier in their home in Wyoming, Ohio, near Cincinnati. Photo / Maddie McGarvey / The Washington Post