American convicted of triple murder in Spain now free in US after Venezuela prisoner swap

Independent

3 days ago

Donald Trump's administration hailed a prisoner exchange with Venezuela as a diplomatic success that brought home 10 Americans who were 'wrongfully detained" there.
The men there were 'hostages,' according to a statement from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee shared by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Those Americans are 'now free and back in our homeland,' Rubio said.
But one of those men is an American-Venezuelan dual citizen who was convicted of murdering three people in Spain in 2016, according to Venezuelan court records and statements from officials in Madrid.
Dahud Hanid Ortiz, 55, was sentenced in Venezuela in January 2024 to 30 years in prison after he was convicted of killing three people in Madrid in 2016. He was accused of escaping to his home country, where he was arrested and prosecuted in 2018. Venezuela prohibits the extradition of its citizens, and Venezuelans can be tried for crimes committed outside the country.
Images shared by the U.S. State Department show Ortiz with other Americans who were imprisoned in Venezuela smiling together and waving small American flags as they returned to America on July 18.
A spokesperson for the State Department refused to confirm his identity.
'The United States had the opportunity to secure the release of all Americans detained in Venezuela, many of whom reported being subjected to torture and other harsh conditions,' the spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent. 'For privacy reasons, I won't get into the details of any specific case.'
Ortiz, a former U.S. Marine who served in the Iraq War, reportedly killed three people in Usera, a working-class district in the south of the Spanish capital in 2016.
His alleged target was Víctor Salas, a lawyer who was in a relationship with his ex-wife who he had threatened to kill, according to records reviewed by El Pais. Ortiz is accused of killing two female employees at the firm and a client he mistakenly believed was Salas.
According to Argentinian outlet Infobae, Ortiz used a combat knife and an iron bar to stab and bludgeon the victims, then set the lawyer's office on fire.
Following their deaths, Ortiz returned to Germany, where he was living at the time, and then travelled to Latin America, where he was arrested.
'We all feel like we've been deceived, betrayed and let down,' Salas told Spanish program Vamos a Ver on Tuesday. 'We feel deceived because Dahud Hanid Ortiz was never a political prisoner. He was a murderer who was convicted and sentenced by the Venezuelan authorities. The case record makes it quite clear that he's a criminal.'
He told TeleMadrid that 'the governments of Donald Trump and Maduro have just handed a killer his freedom — someone who's a real danger to society — without anyone bothering to provide a real explanation.'
The prisoner exchange also saw the release of dozens of Venezuelans that the Trump administration had deported to a brutal prison in El Salvador after accusing them of being 'alien enemies' deployed by that country's government to 'invade' the U.S.
Under the deal, 252 Venezuelans — including men who were accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members and summarily deported to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT — were returned to their home country.
Those deportees were imprisoned at the facility for more than four months.
Trump officials had labelled those men the 'worst of the worst' criminals, and 'alien enemies' who committed 'warfare' on U.S. soil — yet they were released in Venezuela, and could be brought back to the United States under court orders.