CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A Venezuelan judge ruled Tuesday that a jailed American man must stand trial on weapons charges, dashing hopes of his family in Utah that he would be released and united with them for Christmas.

The ruling, issued at a preliminary hearing to which the U.S. Embassy’s top diplomat was denied access, came almost 18 months after Joshua Holt was arrested. It was a day after his mother released an audio recording of her son complaining of suffering without medical care.

Holt, 25, traveled to Venezuela in 2016 to marry a fellow Mormon he met on the internet and shortly later the couple was arrested at her family’s apartment in a Caracas public housing complex by police who alleged he was stockpiling weapons.

“I’m totally devastated. I don’t even know what to think” the mother, Laurie Holt, told The Associated Press by telephone from her home near Salt Lake City. “I can’t understand how they can send a young kid who’s completely innocent to trial and feel good about that.”

Judge Ana Maria Gamuza’s decision to formally charge Holt and his wife, Thamara Candelo, came almost two months after she heard arguments in support and against his continued imprisonment — another procedural delay that Washington has cited as evidence the case is being politicized by President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government to retaliate against U.S. economic sanctions.