The alleged murderer of three people in a Madrid law firm in 2016, Dahud Hanid Ortiz, could be missing, since he did not attend the reading of the sentence of the trial he is undergoing in Venezuela and a judge in Madrid has lifted the international arrest warrant, lawyer Víctor Joel Salas explained to Efe
According to the story of the Spanish Prosecutor’s Office, on June 22, 2016, former US Marine Dahud Hanid Ortiz traveled from Germany, where he lived, to Madrid, driven by jealousy and entered the Salas law office, in the Usera neighborhood, to kill him, believing that he was having a relationship with his wife, but the lawyer was not there.
He killed the three people he found – the workers Elisa Consuegra and Maritza Osorio, both of Cuban origin, and the client Pepe Castillo, Ecuadorian – he set fire and fled, until he was arrested in 2018 in Venezuela, his country of origin.
The Venezuelan authorities denied his extradition to Spain alleging that he is a Venezuelan citizen and the Supreme Court of that country referred the case in 2019 to a court in Caracas to begin the process and try him.
The trial began three times, from scratch, due to changes in prosecutor or judge, until in March 2023 it started for the fourth time and the only thing left was for the sentence to be handed down.
Now, Salas has explained to Efe that the whereabouts of the accused is not clear, because just when the sentence was going to be read, the Venezuelan authorities announced that he was going to be expelled to Spain.
The lawyer fears that the alleged murderer is free and is a danger to him and “to all of society.”
Last Tuesday, Dahud Hanid, always according to the same source, did not appear at the hearing for the sentencing of the case, and the judge learned that the Venezuelan authorities had decided to expel him to Spain immediately, and in fact I was already at the Caracas airport.
According to what legal sources informed the lawyer, the Venezuelan Government informed the Spanish consular attaché in Caracas at the beginning of the week that Hanid Ortiz was going to be expelled to Spain because he was supposedly on the list agreed upon between Venezuela and the United States for the release of businessman Alex Saab.
Saab was handed over to Venezuela on Wednesday in exchange for the release of ten Americans and twenty Venezuelans considered “political prisoners.”
But among the names officially made public is not that of the person accused of the triple crime in Madrid, as Víctor Joel Salas assures Efe.
At the same time, last Thursday the head of the Court of Instruction number 41 of Madrid, which initially investigated the case, accepted the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, received that same day, to annul the international search and arrest warrant that existed against the investigated and the reduction in the current red alert will be communicated to Interpol.
The reason is “the evidence that an oral trial has been held in Venezuela for the same facts for which this procedure was followed after the extradition of the only person investigated was denied and based on the ne bis in idem principle” – not judging twice by the same facts -, according to the writing to which Efe had access.
For Víctor Joel Salas this is a procedural error, since neither the prosecutor nor the judge have verified that, according to Venezuelan legislation, a citizen is not tried until the sentence is read.
“This represents great legal uncertainty and a great danger for the common good and the well-being of society, since it means letting a murderer go free, it means endangering both me and the entire society, and it conveys the message that “In Spain you can enter to kill someone and leave without consequences,” according to Salas.
