'Please Help Me!' American Caught In Venezuelan Prison Riot Pleads On Video 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Fernando Llano/AP Fernando Llano/AP 
 
 Joshua Holt — a Mormon missionary from Utah jailed in Venezuela's most notorious prison — has uploaded an emotional video plea for his freedom, saying that his life is under threat amid an ongoing riot by fellow inmates. 
 
 Holt, 26, who traveled to Venezuela in 2016 to marry Thamara Candelo, a woman he met online, has spent the past two years in the El Helicoide prison without charge after police said they found weapons in the couple's Caracas apartment. 
 
 As we reported last year: 
 
 "After their honeymoon last year, the couple settled into Candelo's apartment in a housing project on the outskirts of Caracas. They had planned to move to the U.S. with Candelo's two young daughters, and were waiting for approval for her U.S. visa. But on June 30, an anti-gang police squad burst into Candelo's apartment, where agents claimed to find an AK-47 assault rifle and a grenade. Holt and Candelo were hauled off to jail." 
 
 In two 20-second videos shot on a cellphone and posted on his Facebook page, Holt says he has "been begging my government for two years. They say they're doing things but I'm still here." 
 
 "Please, my fellow Americans don't allow me to continue suffering in Venezuela," Holt said in a written message, also posted on his Facebook page. "I am not a political pawn I am a human being a child of God and I just want to live happy with my wife and children. I have NEVER done anything wrong in my life. Please help me!" 
 
 Although the extent of the unrest was not known, in another Facebook post, Holt says, "the prison where I am at has fallen and the guards are here and people are trying to break in my room and kill me. WHAT DO WE DO?" 
 
 Chief Prosecutor Tarek William Saab announced in a tweet that he had sent a commission to the prison and that the parties had expressed a "willingness to carry out the respective coordination ... in order to resolve the situation." 
 
 The Associated Press reports: ||||| (CNN) Inmates have revolted and taken control of a notorious prison in Venezuela, as the volatile country braces for presidential elections decried as illegitimate by regional leaders. 
 
 Men identifying themselves as prisoners posted videos online saying they had taken over a detention center in the Helicoide ("the Helix"), the headquarters of intelligence agency Sebin in the capital, Caracas, because of torture and human rights violations. 
 
 The US embassy in Venezuela expressed concern over the incident, after an American political prisoner Joshua Holt, a former Mormon missionary from Utah , posted a video on social media saying he feared for his life. 
 
 ALERT If the United States does not promptly rescue Joshua Holt he could be lynched by Maduro's regime agents on next hours. Keep in mind, the rule of law DOES NOT exist in Venezuela... @POTUS @VP @SecPompeo pic.twitter.com/fNAGyGOnmA 
 
 Venezuelan authorities later said they had "normalized" the situation at the prison, but inmates refuted the claim. 
 
 Venezuelans will head to the polls Sunday to elect a new president as the country is roiled by an economic and social crisis, with millions suffering food and medicine shortages, hyperinflation and growing insecurity. 
 
 In a statement released on Monday, representatives from 10 Latin American countries along with Spain and the United States reiterated their "condemnation of the authoritarian regime" of President Nicolas Maduro. The group also issued a final request for the government to suspend the elections. 
 
 There have been repeated calls from leaders in the region to suspend the election because it is "illegitimate" and lacking in "credibility." 
 
 The Helicoide prison's inmates include jailed opponents of Maduro, as well as US citizen Holt, many of whom have expressed fears over their safety and asked to be freed in postings on social media 
 
 "Joshua Holt and other political prisoners are in danger," the embassy tweeted on its verified account . "The Venezuelan government is directly responsible for their safety and we will hold them responsible if anything happens to them." 
 
 Estamos muy preocupados por el motín en El Helicoide. Joshua Holt y otros ciudadanos estadounidenses están en peligro. El gobierno de Venezuela es directamente responsable por su seguridad y le haremos responsables si algo les sucede. — US Embassy, VE (@usembassyve) May 16, 2018 
 
 Venezuela's Attorney General Tarek Saab later stopped short of claiming the government had regained full control of the detention center in the capital, saying the situation had "normalized". 
 
 Speaking to CNN Espanol , Saab said the uprising was "a protest on behalf of the prisoners" and that he had sent a delegation to hold dialogue with the prisoners, which had reached a "positive agreement". 
 
 Saab rejected prisoner claims of torture, extortion and minors being held inside the center. 
 
 Prisoners, speaking to CNNE, denied that the authorities were in control. 
 
 "Inside the prison, all the prisoners are in control. And at that this moment, the people from the government who have approached us have not offered any solutions, none," Daniel Ceballos, a prisoner and former opposition mayor said, adding they were all resisting and asked that for the public to resist alongside them. 
 
 Todd Robinson, US Embassy charge d'affaires in Venezuela, told reporters outside the country's foreign ministry Wednesday: "The truth is we don't know anything and it seems like the authorities don't know anything either." ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Alex Johnson 
 
 June 16 was Joshua and Thamara Holt's first wedding anniversary. 
 
 Friday is the first anniversary of their imprisonment in a Venezuelan jail. 
 
 For a full year now, Joshua Holt's mother, Laurie Moon Holt of Riverton, Utah, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have worked tirelessly to secure the couple's freedom. 
 
 Joshua Holt and his wife, Thamara Candelo Holt, in an undated photo. Courtesy Holt Family 
 
 Laurie Holt wrote letters to both Barack Obama while he was president and then to President Donald Trump, alleging that the Venezuelan government was treating her son brutally. 
 
 "Josh and Thamy will have spent 1 full year in this unjust prison. Not even a rehearing. For simply falling in love," Laurie Holt wrote in a message to supporters on Wednesday. "Please pray harder than you ever have before." 
 
 Hatch, meanwhile, said this week that he has met with U.S. officials "from every level of government." Friday's anniversary, he said, is "an important time to remind Josh and his family that we are still anxiously engaged in the fight for his freedom." 
 
 On Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert accused the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of having refused to seek medical attention for Joshua Holt's "difficult and painful to ongoing medical ailments, which have worsened by delays and denials of proper care." She again called on Maduro to release the Holts on humanitarian grounds. 
 
 They just clicked online 
 
 A year and a half ago, Joshua Holt, a former missionary who is now 25, met Thamara Belen Caleño Candelo — a Venezuelan national from Ecuador with two young daughters — on a Mormon forum where he was seeking native Spanish speakers to help him master the language. 
 
 The couple, both of whom are committed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, quickly fell in love. Joshua Holt traveled to Venezuela to propose, and five days later, on June 16, 2016, they were married. They settled into the apartment in Caracas where Thamara Holt lived with her daughters while they awaited U.S. visas. 
 
 Precisely two weeks later, on June 30, Venezuelan officers burst into their home and arrested the newlyweds. 
 
 Gustavo González López, Venezuela's minister of homeland affairs, peace and justice, said in a televised address three weeks after the raid that officers found two rifles in the apartment — an AK-47 and an imitation M-15 — along with ammunition, a hand grenade and detailed maps of Caracas, the capital. 
 
 López said the Holts were arrested in a larger operation to find the paramilitary killers of Omar Jesus Molina Marin, a prominent socialist leader. He said there was evidence that Joshua Holt may have been working with criminal gangs to undermine the government. 
 
 'Look what we found!' 
 
 Only three eyewitnesses are known to have spoken publicly about the police raid: Thamara Holt's mother, María Candelo, whom National Public Radio interviewed in March; a neighbor who vividly recounted the raid to The Miami Herald, which withheld the woman's identity for her own protection — and Joshua Holt, who wrote a nine-page letter about their ordeal to his mother on Aug. 21. 
 
 Laurie Moon Holt holds a photograph of her son Joshua Holt at her home, in Riverton, Utah, on July 13, 2016. Rick Bowmer / AP - file 
 
 According the accounts of all three, officers began going door to door in the apartment building around dawn on June 30. When they reached the Holts' unit, they conducted a search and examined Joshua Holt's papers. After a few hours, the apartment had been trashed, and the Holts had been arrested. 
 
 The unidentified neighbor told the Herald that officers noticed that Joshua Holt was recording the raid on his cellphone. 
 
 "In this country, you can't search without a warrant, so he thought it was noteworthy," the woman said. "They confiscated his phone and took him away with other people." 
 
 Candelo, the new bride's mother, told NPR that she saw officers slip weapons into Joshua Holt's luggage and shout, "Look what we found!" 
 
 In his Aug. 21 letter, Joshua Holt told his mother: "It wasn't until days later that I found out that the police had entered into our apartment a third time asking for $10,000 dollars and afterwards planting these things in our apartment because we had no money. 
 
 "They did and said horrible things to my wife trying to get her to say bad things about me, but she refused to say anything that wasn't true," Holt wrote. "My poor wife was taken from her two beautiful children and placed in here under charges that she was my accomplice." 
 
 'I give her a kiss and tell her I love her' 
 
 In the past year, Joshua Holt has been scheduled for court hearings at least four times. The hearings never happened. Twice, the judge failed to show up. At least two other scheduled hearings were simply canceled. 
 
 Holt's attorney, Jeannette Prieto, told NBC News at the time that a hearing scheduled for Oct. 11 was canceled after concerns were raised about "cruel and inhumane" punishment that Holt was given for reasons that were never explained. 
 
 Prieto said Holt was taken to a hallway of the prison, forced to strip naked and ordered to jump up and down repeatedly. 
 
 Observant Mormons wear underclothing called "sacred garments" or "Temple garments" — a symbol of their having taken part in a special ceremony as a reminder of the covenants they make in the Temple. Holt, according to Prieto, "was also obligated to completely take off his inner garments." 
 
 "He was exposed in a hallway," she said, citing the accounts of both Holts and of other detainees at the facility. "This violates every human right of every human being — the lack of respect to his dignity, to his religious beliefs, to be treated like a person with dignity and respect." 
 
 In his letter home, Joshua Holt wrote: "I see my wife once a day when I go to retrieve pop bottles filled with water to bathe myself. I give her a kiss and tell her I love her and someday we'll be a family again. ... 
 
 "I have never spent so many nights crying myself to sleep wondering why God is allowing this to happen to me and my family," he wrote. "The truth is if I could I would stay here double the time just so my wife could have her freedom and be with our daughters."
– As Venezuela gears up for its presidential election Sunday, the economic and social turmoil there continues. But for one American, trapped in the Helicoide prison in Caracas, the stakes are especially high. NPR and CNN report on the plight of Utah's Joshua Holt, a Mormon missionary jailed there in 2016 with his wife, Thamara Candelo, a Venezuelan Mormon Holt met online before heading to Venezuela to marry her. They were waiting on paperwork for Candelo so they could move back to the US, along with her two young daughters, when they were detained in an anti-gang raid in June 2016 and hit with weapons charges. Now, prisoners are rioting in the Helicoide, and Holt, 26, is using social media to plea for help. "The prison where I am at has fallen the guards are here and people are trying to break in my room and kill me. WHAT DO WE DO?" he posted on Facebook Wednesday. Holt's trial on the weapons charges was set to start Tuesday, but he and his wife were never brought to the courthouse, per the AP. "They want to kill me and paint the walls with my blood," he added in another post, begging the US to help him and noting Venezuela's intelligence agency said it won't let him go "as long as my government continues attacking this government." He also uploaded two short video clips making similar pleas, saying, "I've been begging my government for two years. They say they're doing things but I'm still here." On Thursday, the US Embassy in Venezuela tweeted that it's concerned about the situation at the Helicoide and that Holt and other Americans there are in peril. "The Venezuelan government is directly responsible for its security and we will hold it responsible if something happens to them," the embassy added. (The "illegal" closing of a Kellogg factory there.)