Utah man freed from Venezuela

WASHINGTON — A Utah man jailed in Venezuela on weapons charges nearly two years ago was released Saturday after a U.S. senator pressed for his freedom in a surprise meeting with President Nicolas Maduro.

“I’m just overwhelmed with gratitude,” Joshua Holt, 26, said in an oval office meeting with President Trump, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and other lawmakers.

“I’m just so grateful for what you guys have done, thinking about me and caring about me, a normal person.”

Holt’s wife was also jailed on what they claimed were bogus charges. The pair were accompanied on their flight home by Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who met with Maduro on Friday — the outcome of months of backchannel talks about Holt between one of the senator’s aides and close allies of the Venezuelan president.

Holt traveled to Venezuela in June 2016 to marry a woman he met online while he was looking for Spanish-speaking Mormons to improve his Spanish.