American in prison riot pleads for help
Jailed for two years and in the midst of a prison riot in Caracas, Joshua Holt pressed record on a cellphone and pleaded for help.
“I’ve been begging my government for two years. They say they’re doing things, but I’m still here,” a distraught Holt, 26, said Wednesday in a clandestine video posted to Facebook — part of a salvo of desperate messages aimed at pressuring the U.S. government to free him as Venezuela rapidly deteriorates.
Holt, a Mormon missionary from Utah, was jailed in 2016 days after he traveled to Venezuela to marry a woman he met online. Police said he was stockpiling weapons and grenades in public housing.
He has yet to stand trial, and his confinement has become a major point of contention in the already fraught relations between Washington and Caracas.
While the U.S. government has sought to secure Holt’s release, tensions have spiked at the notorious Helicoide political prison in Caracas ahead of Sunday’s presidential election.
Autocrat Nicolás Maduro is expected to easily win.
Prisoners rioted and overtook the facility over accusations of torture, and videos posted to social media show dozens of inmates roaming freely inside the prison as security forces clad in masks and riot gear secure the exterior of the pyramid-shaped building.
Apparent fears of a brutal crackdown from authorities — or danger in the chaos of the riot — drove Holt to renew his calls for help through two 20-second videos and a Facebook message.
“Help me please United States, how long do I have to suffer unjustly in this place? They want to kill me and paint the walls with my blood,” he wrote Wednesday.
He added: “The sebin has told me that as long as my government continues attacking this government and as long as Marco Rubio continues talking about me the longer that they will never let me go,” using the acronym for the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, headquartered at the prison.
A U.S. State Department official said the agency has reviewed Holt’s videos and called on the Venezuelan government to release him on humanitarian grounds.