Family of Marine Vet Held in Venezuela Speaks Out About His Mysterious Imprisonment
“Don’t WORRY!” reads the cryptic note scribbled on a scrap of paper smuggled out of a dank basement cell. “Han Solo always wins!”
The weeks-old message is all the family of Matthew Heath has to pin its hopes on since the former U.S. Marine corporal was arrested at a roadblock in Venezuela almost two months ago and accused by Nicolás Maduro of being a terrorist and a spy.
But other than the brief mention by Maduro, the American’s plight has largely gone unnoticed.
Nobody in the family or Trump administration has spoken to Heath. Nor has the Venezuelan government shared video of the former intelligence contractor as it did when it detained two former Green Berets tied to a failed attempt to overthrow Maduro.
Now, for the first time, Heath’s family in Knoxville, Tennessee, is breaking its silence.
In an interview with The Associated Press, they denied Heath went to South America with the aim of plotting against Maduro and insisted he always kept on the straight and narrow.
But they are at a loss to explain some of his movements, including an earlier arrest on weapons charges in neighboring Colombia, where he arrived in March on a fishing boat with two other U.S. veterans.
“My guess is he was an American in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Everett Rutherford, Heath’s uncle, said.
Heath, 39, was arrested on Sept. 10 traveling along the Caribbean coast, accused of scheming with three Venezuelans to sabotage oil refineries and other infrastructure.
Authorities said they found images of targets on Heath’s cellphone, and they displayed pictures taken of a grenade launcher, explosives and a bag of U.S. dollars they said was being transported by a “terrorist cell.”
But many suspect the evidence was planted. None of the items were displayed in the first photos taken at the roadblock where Heath was arrested.
U.S. officials immediately denied sending Heath to Venezuela and called for his humane treatment.
The arrest came on the heels of a failed raid organized in May by Florida-based security firm Silvercorp, which ended in the death of six Venezuelan fighters and two Green Berets thrown in jail.
And Heath’s background with the Marines and past work as a U.S. government contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan raised the possibility that he was on some sort of secret mission — although there’s no evidence linking him to the Silvercorp fiasco or other possible mercenary activity.
U.S. officials say they are worried Heath is being mistreated in a prison called the “House of Dreams” by Venezuela’s military intelligence.
A recent United Nations report described the facility as overcrowded, without natural light or ventilation. Former detainees recounted to the UN sleeping on the floor and being forced to defecate in a plastic bag changed once a week.
The only contact Heath has had with the outside world is through smuggled handwritten notes, one of which mentions Han Solo — his hero from the Star Wars movies — and another his time on the personal security detail of Ambassador William Taylor in Iraq.
“I send these letters in the blind, I hope you are getting them,” he scribbled in one missive addressed to his family dated Oct. 7. “They asked hard, I haven’t said s—.”
Republican Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee said his office is in close contact with the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Colombia — the U.S. Embassy in Caracas was forced to shutter last year — doing all it can to secure Heath’s release.
“We remain concerned about the condition in which he is being unjustly held and his ability to receive due process,” Fleischmann said in a statement to the AP.
what happened to matthew heath?
The improbable chain of events that ended with Heath being held in a Venezuelan jail began when Heath purchased a 53-foot trawler — called Purple Dream — in Houston, according to his family.
Heath in recent years had taught himself to sail. His family says he kept a boat in Key West, Florida, with the hope it would be his ticket to a new career on the water.
The Purple Dream, with its rusting steel cabin and fraying American flag, set sail sometime before March, according to Heath’s family.
On March 9 it had to be assisted at sea by Nicaragua’s navy, according to a Nicaraguan army news release. On March 20 it sailed into the harbor of Cartagena, according to Colombian maritime authorities.
In addition to Heath, two others were on board: Jason Phalin, a recently retired Navy SEAL who is a weapons instructor for State Department-funded contractors, and Rickey Neil Gary, a former Marine reservist who, like Heath, participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and later transitioned to private security work.
Neither men returned phone calls and emails seeking comment, nor was the Heath family even aware of their names until the AP located them on the maritime records.
The Purple Dream arrived to Cartagena unannounced reporting mechanical problems and the men never legally entered the country.
On March 23, it departed with all three crew members on board, listing its destination as Corpus Christi, Texas, according to port records provided to the AP.
Two days later, however, Heath was arrested some 12 hours inland by road.
It’s not clear how he sneaked ashore or why he was so intent on entering Colombia. He told his family he had gone to visit a girlfriend about whom they knew next to nothing.
At a roadblock entering the city of Bucaramanga, police discovered three cartridges and 49 rounds of ammo for a 9 mm pistol in his bag — probably for a firearm kept on board the ship, his family says.
Colombian prosecutors filed weapons charges against Heath which carry penalties of 9 to 12 years in jail. They said at the time of his arrest he was traveling in a Toyota pickup with five others.
Luis Leal, the vehicle’s driver, told the AP he had picked up Heath, two Venezuelan men and a woman at a crossroads as he was driving south from Cartagena. He offered to give the hitchhikers a lift to Bucaramanga for about $80 each.
Heath’s family doesn’t know what led him to cross into Venezuela. The State Department last year advised Americans not to travel to the country, warning of civil unrest and the risk of arbitrary arrest or kidnapping.
Contact after he was released from the Colombian prison was infrequent, but he continued to ask friends and family members for cash. In total, the family has accounted for $27,000 sent to him in Colombia.
Spooked by his experience in jail, his family believes he was misled, or possibly extorted, by people preying on his desperation to return home.
In April, he told his family he traveled to Puerto Bolivar in Colombia, believing he was going to catch a boat to Aruba. But it never showed up. In June, his grandmother died and he missed his son’s 11th birthday.
“Wherever he was in the world he always flew home for his birthday,” Rutherford said. “Even when he was deployed in Iraq, he once flew home for a three-day visit.”
The Purple Dream was next spotted in Aruba, showing up unannounced around midnight July 21 with two people aboard, according to the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard. Port authorities told the ship over the radio that the borders were closed.
“The captain informed me that they have been on the water for 20 days and are very tired,” according to a port official’s report.
Eventually, the ship and its crew, which said they had sailed from Key West, were escorted into the harbor.
It’s not clear what happened to its two crew members, who Aruban authorities refused to identify, or why the boat even docked there.
It’s just one of many mysteries surrounding Heath’s time in South America adding to his family’s hopelessness.
While Trudy Rutherford said she wishes she knew more about her nephew’s endeavors, she’s certain he did no wrong.
“Every day I wake up feeling sick and want to throw up,” Rutherford said. “I just want him back.”
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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