Perpetrator of triple homicide in Madrid included in group of political prisoners repatriated by US from Venezuela

The United States has welcomed the release and surrender by the Venezuelan Chavista regime of a group of 10 Americans who landed last Friday in Texas, among them a triple murderer, Dahud Hanid Ortiz. The identity of this freed man has been confirmed to EL PAÍS through a source close to the Spanish secret services and another from the Venezuelan NGO Foro Penal, which is dedicated to the defense of political prisoners. This organization, a reference in the field of human rights in Venezuela, warned that among those being released was one who was not a political prisoner. This Tuesday, Foro Penal confirmed to this newspaper that it was referring to Ortiz.

At the time of publication, the U.S. State Department had not responded to a request from this newspaper for confirmation as to whether Ortiz has been transferred to a prison. Images published in the U.S. media show him last Friday, waving to the camera as he and the rest of the group left the Joint Base San Antonio military installation in Texas.

Born in Venezuela, Ortiz obtained U.S. citizenship and served in Iraq. He was sentenced in Venezuela in January 2024 to 30 years in prison for killing three people in Madrid in 2016. After committing the crime, he escaped to his home country, where he was arrested in 2018.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrated the release in a statement sent to the press on Friday: “Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland.” Rubio also thanked President Donald Trump for the “freedom” of those Americans.

The swap was a three-way deal between the Trump administration, the Maduro administration and the administration of El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. Under the terms of the deal, 252 Venezuelans were released from the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), the mega-jail built by Bukele to lock up gang members in El Salvador. They had been deported there by the United States, without trial, accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua, a dangerous criminal organization.

In exchange, Maduro returned a dozen U.S. prisoners held in Venezuelan jails. Among them are tourists, according to NGOs dedicated to securing the release of political prisoners. They cite the case of Lucas Hunter, arrested in January while kite surfing in the border area with Colombia, or that of Wilbert Joseph Castaneda, who was apprehended in his hotel room in Caracas on August 28 last year.

Before leaving for Texas, the group of Americans stopped in El Salvador, where they were received with honors by Bukele. “You’re free now,” wrote the Salvadoran president on the social network X, accompanied by a video in which he took part of the credit for their liberation.

“Nothing says freedom like the American flag. Ten Americans freed from Venezuelan prisons today are coming home because of POTUS, Secretary Marco Rubio and Nayib Bukele,” the U.S. embassy in Venezuela posted on X.

The first clue that Ortiz had slipped into the group of U.S. political prisoners came from Venezuelan Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello: “We handed over some murderers for you,” Cabello told the Venezuelans released from Cecot when they landed in their homeland. Among those “murderers” was Ortiz.

In the images collected by various U.S. media outlets, Ortiz can be seen with the rest of the released prisoners, posing in official photos holding the U.S. flag and smiling. Media such as CNN have published the complete list of those released, citing a U.S. government official. Ortiz appears among them with a slight variation in his name: Danud, instead of Dahud.

In a video published by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, he thanks former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero for his mediation in this prisoner exchange and invites him to come to Venezuela soon.

Zapatero replied that he was unaware of the list of prisoners holding U.S. nationality. “My efforts, as on so many occasions, have been focused, for the sake of dialogue and reconciliation, on the Venezuelan prisoners, in favor of whom I have been taking an interest, as so many families in that country are well aware.”

The triple homicide perpetrated by Ortiz took place in 2016 in a law office in Usera, a working-class district in the south of the Spanish capital. None of the three victims were who he was actually going after that day. His target was Víctor Salas, a lawyer who was in a relationship with his ex-wife who he had threatened to kill. That day, however, he murdered two female employees of the office and a client whom he mistook for Salas. Eight years later he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in Venezuela, his home country, for the crime. But a little over a year later, Ortiz has regained his freedom thanks to a prisoner exchange between the United States and Venezuela. A new plot twist in a never-ending story.

His conviction did not come about easily. After committing the murders, Ortiz returned to Germany, where he lived at the time. He created a whole framework with his cell phone, photos, and tickets from commercial establishments to hide his crime, but, despite all his precautions, the Spanish National Police gathered the necessary evidence to prove that the hand that had executed those three people was Ortiz’s.

When cornered, the ex-military officer escaped to Latin America and ended up in his native Venezuela, where he was arrested. After several comings and goings, the trial against him was set in motion in the South American country, although it was delayed four times until the final verdict was reached: guilty.

Now, Salas is once again living with the fear that the man who tried to kill him is at large. The lawyer does not understand how it was possible to include a man convicted of a triple murder in such a plea bargain, and given that he has only served a fraction of his sentence.

In an interview granted to a German media outlet, Ortiz’s ex-wife has assured that “the competent authorities are currently evaluating the inclusion of this person in the police information system, in order to ensure that he cannot enter the Schengen area, and in particular, Germany.” She added: “There is a well-founded suspicion that the man’s lawyer in Venezuela intentionally provided false information by not presenting him as a convicted murderer, but as a political prisoner or even a U.S. spy, with the aim of including him in the prisoner exchange.”

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