Tony Holden, an American defense contractor, is thanking President Donald Trump after gaining his freedom from detention in Kuwait. In a video in which Holden was surrounded by loved ones, he expressed his gratitude to the president.
“I wanted you to be able to meditate on how you’ve affected, personally, lives and the difference that you’ve made,” a visibly emotional Holden said. He called the team behind the efforts to bring him home “instruments” of God.
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In November 2022, Holden was arrested while working at Camp Arifjan, a U.S. Army base in Kuwait, under Vectrus, a U.S.-based company. Holden’s family described the ordeal on a website dedicated to securing his release.
According to his family, the men who arrested Holden “became violent so quickly that Tony thought he was being kidnapped.” They then forced him to lead them to his apartment on base where they searched for “drugs.” However, Holden’s family and supporters said he abstains from drugs and alcohol for religious reasons. Once the men realized Holden had a wife and daughter, they forced him to take them to where his family lived off base. The men reportedly beat Holden multiple times during the incident.
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After searching the second off-base apartment and not finding drugs, the men took Holden, along with his wife and 3-year-old daughter, into the desert in the middle of the night. According to Holden’s family, the men “physically threatened” his wife and daughter. The family said Holden was later “coerced into signing a written confession in Arabic to protect his family.” They then administered a drug test on Holden, which came back negative, but the defense contractor was still charged with drug possession, drug trafficking and attempting to flee the country. His family said Holden was not given legal representation.
The judge in Holden’s trial eventually realized that the case was false, as the officers presented a fabricated conversation between themselves and Holden in English, even though they didn’t speak the language. Despite this, Holden was sentenced to five years in prison, where he remained even after an internal police investigation found that his confession had been coerced, according to his family.
Holden spent 903 days in Kuwaiti detention until he was released on Wednesday, April 30.
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In his first 100 days in office, Trump secured the release of dozens of Americans held hostage across the globe, including Keith Siegel, who was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, and Marc Fogel, an American teacher taken captive in Russia. Siegel and Fogel both thanked Trump for securing their respective releases. Fogel and his mother were guests at Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in early March.
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department for comment on this report, but did not get an answer in time for publication.
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