American freed from Venezuelan jail returns home
Salt Lake City ( US), May 29: Nearly two years after a trip to meet the woman he loved turned into an imprisonment in a Venezuelan jail, an exhausted but grateful Utah man has arrived home with his wife.
Josh Holt arrived at the Salt Lake City airport to a tearful, cheering crowd holding signs in his favourite colour, green, with messages such as: “We never gave up.”
His grandmother draped an American flag around his shoulders as he exchanged long hugs with person after person while the crowd sang “The StarSpangled Banner.” Holt spoke briefly to thank everyone who helped him and his wife, Thamara Caleno, get released from jail but said they were exhausted, feeling like they’d gotten “maybe four hours of sleep in four days.”
Standing nearby were his parents, celebrating a homecoming they’d worked tirelessly to bring about.
Laurie and Jason Holt woke at 4: 30 am last Saturday to a phone call they had been anxiously anticipating for two years.
Their son, Josh Holt, now 26, travelled to Caracas in June 2016 to marry a fellow Mormon he had met online while looking to improve his Spanish. The two were waiting for Caleno’s US visa when they were arrested at her family’s apartment in a government housing complex.
Josh Holt and his Venezuelan wife were locked in a Caracas jail alongside some of the country’s most- hardened criminals — and President Nicolas Maduro’s top opponents — for what the US government argued were bogus charges of stockpiling weapons.
The Salt Lake City parents had been through the emotional rollercoaster of believing their son would be released only to watch mediation efforts unravel at the last minute on at least three occasions.
So they braced for another disappointment after an reporter informed the couple Friday.