Caracas: Venezuela have detained a US man on suspicion of encouraging armed groups to destabilise President Nicolas Maduro, the government said on Wednesday.
The SEBIN intelligence service arrested Joshua Holt on June 30 in Ciudad Caribia, a public housing complex on the outskirts of Caracas, Interior Minister Gustavo Gonzalez Lopez said on state television.
Six others were detained along with Holt and another six Venezuelans died in a shoot-out with agents, he added, releasing what he said were photos and videos of the foreigners shooting.
Earlier this month, US media reported that Holt, a 24-year-old Mormon former missionary from Utah, was arrested after travelling to Venezuela to marry a woman, also a Mormon, whom he had recently met online.
Witnesses said he was detained after filming a police door-to-door search on his mobile phone, after which they planted the weapons inside his apartment, The Miami Herald reported.
US media report that Holt’s family is distraught over his detention which they believe is a misunderstanding.
Holt, just back from a weeklong honeymoon with his new wife, was awaiting US visas for his new family in Caracas when the incident took place at his new wife’s apartment in public housing, the reports said.
Holt, arrested together with his wife, an Ecuadoran naturalised as a Venezuelan citizen, “has admitted that he is a trained gunman who has a certificate from the (US) Federal Aviation Administration accrediting him as a pilot,” Gonzalez Lopez said.
An AK-47 automatic rifle, a replica M-4 rifle, ammunition, a grenade, Caracas maps and computer equipment were found in the apartment where Holt was staying, Venezuelan officials said.
Maduro is fighting for his political survival as Venezuela teeters on the brink of economic collapse, devastated by the global plunge in the price of oil, its main export.
