“The great people of Utah will be very happy!”, celebrated president Donald Trump on his Twitter account this May 26th. After almost two years imprisoned, the American citizen Joshua Holt and his Venezuelan wife Tamara Caleño were released and sent by plane to the United States. Both left Venezuelan soil by the ramp 4 of Maiquetia Airport, near Caracas. The same ramp used by senior officials of Nicolas Maduro’s government.

In 2016, Joshua Holt traveled from the United States to Venezuela to get married. But marriage didn’t change his life. An Operation to Liberate and Protect the People (OLP) held on June 30 that same year did.

The missionary man of Mormon religion and his wife were deprived of freedom in an OLP procedure, a tactical operations program implemented by state security forces to end violence, and which have been pointed for violating human rights.

Both Holt and Caleño remained detained in El Helicoide, Venezuelan intelligence police’s prison, with other prisoners, including political ones. In there, they waited for almost two years for a trial that never concluded.

The couple left the country this Saturday a few minutes past noon, according to local reporters. They traveled on airplane N957CP, whose acronym belongs to a Citgo aircraft, the largest Venezuelan refinery in the United States.

President Trump tweeted that Holt and Caleño should be landing in Washington D.C. this evening to reunite with their family in the White House at about 7:00 pm.

Good news about the release of the American hostage from Venezuela. Should be landing in D.C. this evening and be in the White House, with his family, at about 7:00 P.M. The great people of Utah will be very happy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018

Freedom for humanitarian reasons

Joshua Holt met Tamara Caleño on the Internet and traveled to Venezuela to get marry in June 2016. The couple stayed temporarily in the country while waiting for their visas to travel back to the US.

One month after the couple’s detention in Ciudad Caribia, a working class neighborhood located 30 km outside Caracas, the Public Prosecutor’s Office informed that both Holt and Caleño were deprived of their liberty for alleged responsibility in the illicit bearing of weapons of war.

In the OLP procedure, an AK47 rifle, a M4 type facsimile, bolivars and dollars in cash, a camera, one laptop and airplane tickets were seized by security forces.

On a press conference held on February 2017, Jeannette Prieto, lawyer of the case, stated that Holt’s hearing had been postponed several times. “Every time there is a hearing, it is deferred”, she warned. “He has not been presented within the period established by the law and both Holt and Caleño have been denied Access to their relatives”.

She added that the police has disrespected Holt’s creed after having been “stripped before all his companions and forced to do push-ups”. Prieto also said that the US Embassy in Caracas has kept touch with her to follow up on the case and that the American citizen has been affected by various health issues during his detention at El Helicoide.

Foro Penal, a Venezuelan NGO devoted to the defense of human rights, listed Holt’s case as one of the many that shows the Venezuela government seeks “systematic incarceration for political purposes”.

At the end of 2017, the US Department of State insisted on the release of Holt for humanitarian reasons. The US government expressed concern about the state of health of the man of Mormon religion in what the office called insufficient medical attention.

After an inmates revolt in El Helicoide on May 16th, the charge d’affaires of the US in Venezuela, Todd Robinson, called the government of Nicolos Maduro to free Holt for humanitarian reasons. Ten days after, Maduro ordered the expulsion of Robison and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.