When an American college student was recently released from a North Korean prison and taken to a Cincinnati hospital late Tuesday night, it was a Georgia-based specialty air carrier that delivered him, according to the company's general counsel.

After being held prisoner for more than a year, Otto Warmbier came home in a specially-equipped Gulfstream III jet that previously brought Americans back from Africa in 2014 during the Ebola outbreak, Randall Davis, general counsel and vice president of Phoenix Air Group in Cartersville, said Wednesday.

Warmbier, 23, was arrested in January 2016 for taking a North Korean propaganda poster off a wall as a prank. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, despite his tearful pleas in a trial that took an hour, according to news reports.