American crosses into North Korea, denounces U.S.
TOKYO — Just weeks after three Americans detained in North Korea were released, a U.S. citizen has shown up in the repressive state, appearing on television to denounce his home country as a “mafia enterprise” and call American democracy “an illusion.”
Although details remain sketchy, it seems that the man, Arturo Pierre Martinez of El Paso, willingly went to North Korea. He says he is not being detained.
At a news conference Sunday morning in Pyongyang, Martinez vigorously criticized the United States for alleged human rights violations.
“The illegal war carried out against the nation of Iraq serves as a perfect example of how the U.S. government acts much like a mafia enterprise by criminally plundering entire nations of their resources, strategic reserves and economies instead of smaller-scale business and individuals, and does so without a code of ethics,” he said in a video released by the official Korean Central News Agency.
...
Several of Martinez’s remarks were extreme. He said that democracy in the United States was “an illusion” and that the “billionaires in power are nothing short of sociopathic megalomaniacs on the path to absolute world domination.” He also talked about unidentified flying objects, CIA involvement in the cocaine trade and “ultrasonic” devices that cause people to hear voices and experience bodily discomfort, CNN reported.
