Family of US contractor jailed in Kuwait asks Biden to push for pardon
The family of a US defense contractor imprisoned in Kuwait on what he claims are false drug charges is appealing to the Biden administration to intervene.
WASHINGTON — As President Joe Biden uses his final days in office to issue pardons for Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes, the family of a US defense contractor imprisoned in Kuwait is pleading with Biden to seek his pardoning from the Gulf state.
From his windowless cell inside Kuwait’s overcrowded Central Prison complex, Tony Holden is serving out a 15-year sentence for a crime he and his family insist he did not commit.
His experience mirrors that of other private contractors in the small, oil-rich country that’s home to thousands of US troops. A New York Times investigation in 2020 found that Kuwaiti police, some of whom were entitled to bonuses for confiscating drugs, had arrested more than two dozen mostly Black American contractors who were handed lengthy prison sentences for alleged drug possession and trafficking.
Many recounted similar stories of police conducting no-knock nighttime raids and forcing the targets into false confessions of selling drugs in Kuwait, a dry country where the sale of alcohol is banned and authorities have been cracking down on the use of illicit drugs. In late December, Kuwaiti customs officers seized nearly 1.8 million pills of the amphetamine-type stimulant known as Captagon that were hidden inside a furniture shipment arriving at Shuwaikh Port.
