Matthew Heath: A US Citizen Politically Imprisoned in Venezuela
By Trudy Rutherford, aunt of Matthew Heath
September 11 is a hard day for many Americans. We are reminded each year of the terrorist attack that killed so many innocents. While I didn’t lose anyone on that day in 2001, on that anniversary date I often reflect on what my country means to me. But on September 11, 2020, that date took on a new and horrible meaning for me and my family. I was in the kitchen at my home in Tennessee when the phone rang. It was my brother, Robert. He had just received a phone call from a State Department official in Washington, DC. Robert told me that his son, my nephew, Matthew Heath, had been arrested in Venezuela. That was the start of a nightmare that has been going on ever since.
Matthew is a native of Maynardville, Tennessee and is currently being held in a Venezuelan jail facing fake charges and a political ‘show trial’ because Nicolas Maduro wants to use him as a political pawn in an attempt to gain concessions from the United States Government.
Parts of Matthew’s story have been told in articles in the Miami Herald on June 16 and June 17 and the Washington Free Beacon on March 2 and June 16.
According to the CASLA Institute, a respected human rights organization, Matthew was kidnapped in Colombia while on business related to his evolving pleasure boating business. He was then held for ransom. Indeed, members of our family received numerous appeals from Matthew in the weeks leading up to his arrest in Venezuela and we believe he was being forced to ask for money by the kidnappers. Due to COVID-19, Colombian borders were closed and transportation routes out of the country evaporated. Matthew’s kidnappers were ultimately successful in extracting thousands of dollars from our family and his friends under the guise of “helping Matthew get back to the United States.” When the money ran out, so did Matthew’s value to the kidnappers and it appears that he was either dumped in Venezuela, or sold by the kidnappers to Venezuelan authorities. Details of Matthew’s kidnapping and how he came to be in Venezuela only became known late in the fall of 2020. One thing I know for certain is that Matthew would never have willingly or knowingly entered Venezuela.
Matthew was arrested on September 9, 2020 by local police in Falcon Province and was later turned over to the DGCIM, the Venezuelan military intelligence agency. They claimed he was a US spy and a terrorist. I have known this boy since he was born. I have seen him grow up. I saw with pride when he enlisted in the US Marine Corps and I saw the trauma he endured serving his country. Not that I should even need to say it, but there is absolutely no truth to this. The truth of the matter is that Matthew was arrested because he is a US citizen. If President Maduro wants to negotiate a deal with the US, perhaps he thinks that having a US citizen or two to trade will give him leverage.
On March 22, 2021, the CASLA Institute’s filed documentation with the United Nations that documented Matthew’s torture and brutal interrogation by the DGCIM. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — an element of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights — heard about Matthew’s treatment in graphic detail. The length of time over which Matthew was subjected to this brutality is unknown, but it may have lasted until sometime in December of 2020, when the CASLA Institute learned of the inhumane treatment and interceded on his behalf. That is three and a half months after his arrest. Ultimately, Matthew was placed in a detention center in Caracas, where he was kept prisoner under inhumane conditions. He remains there today.
Matthew is innocent of the charges he is facing. Matthew’s attorney in Caracas was able to obtain a copy of the original arrest report filed by the local police. That report and photographs taken at the time indicate that all Matthew had on him at the time of the arrest was a satellite phone, credit cards, a cellular telephone, and $20 in cash. The DGCIM and Attorney General Tarek Saab later told the media that Matthew was in possession of a variety of weapons — including a grenade launcher, an encrypted satellite phone, and thousands of dollars in cash. (As a boat captain, Matthew always carried a satellite phone — it is the same one that was later misrepresented by the Venezuelans as being some kind of spy device.) It was apparent that the DGCIM fabricated this evidence to try to back up their laughable story that Matthew was trying to single-handedly invade their country. Matthew’s lawyer even measured the grenade launcher and the car trunk where it was supposedly found and showed that it would not have fit. Despite this and other arguments on Matthew’s behalf, the Venezuelan court rejected all of the evidence in Matthew’s favor and accepted all of the fabricated DGCIM “evidence.”
Matthew was supposed to have gone on trial in mid-June. It was 48 hours before that trial when his lawyer was finally given a 6-inch pile of copies of the government’s “evidence” — documents he had requested for months. At the last minute, the trial was postponed and it has been rescheduled for the end of June. Despite our certainty of Matthew’s innocence and a lack of any credible government evidence against him, our family fully expects that he will be convicted. We do not expect that any form of true justice or credible legal process will prevail. Matthew is already a political prisoner, but at that point he will be a convict. Perhaps President Maduro needs the veil of legitimacy in order to convince his own starving people that he is powerful or that he is in control. We see it differently. When a leader is afraid of the truth — afraid of a legitimate legal system — then he shows his weakness, not his strength.
The other narrative of importance is that of the effect on the lives of Matthew’s family members in Tennessee. Various members of the family work on almost a daily basis trying to get updates on his physical and psychological status, communicate with his lawyer, send him food and clothing, take care of his obligations in the US, and work with the US Government and no less than five NGOs who are looking for ways to get him out of Venezuela and back home. It is exhausting and enormously stressful work. It has also led to many worrisome days and sleepless nights.
Before writing this article, I thought about how to best describe what the past months have been like for the Heath family. I finally settled on one — the perspective of Matthew’s mother, Connie. She wrote:
Matthew has been detained in Venezuela now for almost a year now, not to mention the time before that during which he was held by his kidnappers. We know that he is innocent and we know that he is being imprisoned for political reasons.
The last ten months have been hard for a variety of reasons. Maybe the hardest part is simply looking for ways to get from one day to the next, not knowing how Matthew is or when he will be home. The uncertainty is really taking a toll, not just on me, but on the rest of the family as well. I literally don’t know what tomorrow will bring so I try to hold on to any bit of hope that I can.
It is also hard to try to keep all of this from adversely affecting Matthew’s 12-year old son. He doesn’t talk much about it, but we know that he is worried and is stressed far beyond someone of his age ever should be. We try to take care of him, but it is hard to know what to do.
We aren’t even sure how much to tell my grandson about what his dad is going through. He needs to know enough to have a basic understanding, but not so much that he can’t handle it. Another concern is that, thanks to the internet, he probably knows more than he tells us, but he is holding it in.
My greatest current fear is that Matthew is still being physically and psychologically tortured and we just don’t have a way of finding out about it, or stopping it from happening. We send money to Matthew’s attorney so he can purchase food and deliver it to the detention facility, but we don’t think that all of the food, or sometimes any of the food, actually reaches him.
I’m often asked what is being done to get Matthew home. In my view, not enough is being done. I do think that people are working to get him out of Venezuela, but we don’t know exactly what they are doing. I also know that some of the things that are being done are things that we can’t be told about.
But, if any progress is being made, it is painfully slow. It is hard to think about the fact that we are coming up on a year since he was arrested by the Venezuelans. It’s also hard to think that not much has changed since this all began last September. I would have thought that it would have been resolved by now. But, nothing has changed and from my viewpoint, neither side seems to be in a hurry to free Matthew. And, I think the same can be said for the other Americans who are being detained in Venezuela. I just keep holding on to any bit of hope that I can find.
Our family knows that the trial is a farce. We have to do what we can to help him prevail, but we know the decision on whether to convict him will be made by President Maduro and not by a judge based on evidence. We also know that the path by which Matthew will come home to us is based on diplomacy. Our government needs to come to some type of deal with Maduro’s government.
While we are in touch with the State Department and are grateful for their support, we don’t believe anyone in the US Government is currently talking to anyone in the Maduro regime — not just about the American hostages, but about anything. If they haven’t even started direct talks, what hope can we have that Matthew will be home any time soon?
