Former Spanish President Rodríguez Zapatero participated in the operation that included the extradition of Dahud Hanid Ortiz, born in Venezuela and holding a US passport.
14ymedio, Madrid, 22 July 2025 — Of the more than fifty prisoners released by Venezuela through an exchange with the United States mediated by former Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, one is not only not a political prisoner, but a murderer. This is Dahud Hanid Ortiz, who in 2016 killed the Cuban women Elisa Consuegra and Maritza Osorio and Ecuadorian Pepe Castillo in Madrid in what is known as the Usera triple murder.
The newspaper El Debate stated this Monday that “someone hasn’t done their job” and denounced Zapatero’s collaboration, as a negotiator, in “the release of the murderer of three people stabbed in Madrid.” Víctor Salas, owner of the law firm where the murders took place and the true target of Hanid Ortiz, who was seeking revenge for his wife’s infidelity with the lawyer, told the Spanish news outlet he felt “terrified”: “That murderer is free on his way to the United States and could come and kill me at any moment.”
Hanid Ortiz, a former US military officer of Venezuelan origin and resident in Germany, showed up at the office of the Peruvian lawyer and discovered his wife was cheating on him on June 22, 2016. When he couldn’t find the lawyer he took his revenge on the two Cuban employees—one from Havana and one from Holguín—and a client, killing them with a crowbar and a knife, and later fled to Venezuela.
“That killer is free on his way to the United States and could come and kill me at any moment.”
He was arrested there in 2018 and sentenced to 30 years in prison in late 2023. Venezuelan authorities had refused to extradite him to Spain, claiming he was a Venezuelan citizen. After his sentencing, the Attorney General’s Office informed the judge that he would be transferred to Spain “for humanitarian reasons,” and the court granted the deportation, but the Spanish authorities objected.
The killer had arrived in Germany in 2011 as a first lieutenant in the US Army after serving in Iraq and Korea. On June 30, 2015, a US military court convicted him of using false documents to obtain the rank of Army officer. He was also sentenced for fraud against the state for pretending his family was still living in the US while he was stationed in Germany, which allowed him to receive $87,000 in social assistance to which he was not entitled.
US authorities released photographs and videos on Monday showing Hanid Ortiz alongside the other nine former prisoners with US citizenship or residency, now free. Smiling, wearing a cap and waving a US flag, he listens attentively as President Nayib Bukele thanks him. In exchange for their release, Bukele returned to Caracas 252 Venezuelan migrants deported to Central American prisons by the Donald Trump administration.
“It was a great decision, and I am very happy, very satisfied, and very grateful,” Zapatero can be heard saying over the phone in a video released by Nicolás Maduro. Maduro thanks him for his mediation and says he hopes “he will soon visit the country so that he can, as always, support the dialogue processes.” The former Spanish president responds: “That’s a done deal.”
“It was a great decision, and I am very happy, very satisfied, and very grateful,” Zapatero can be heard saying over the phone in a video released by Nicolás Maduro.
Neither the Spanish, US, nor Salvadoran governments have yet commented on the release of Dahud Hanid Ortiz. However, Bukele boasted on social media Monday night that the Maduro regime had run out of “hostages from the most powerful country in the world.”
Meanwhile, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced that his office will begin an investigation into the Salvadoran president for the alleged torture and cruel treatment of the 252 people released Friday from a maximum-security prison.
The prisoners, who were released last Friday, described in videos presented by the prosecutor that they were victims of torture and ill-treatment, including being hit with pellets, beatings, cuts, threats, sexual abuse, and poor-quality food.
The organization Foro Penal, one of the organizations that keeps records of Venezuelan political prisoners, announced on social media this Monday that they had confirmed the release of 57 political prisoners, nine of whom were Americans or permanent residents of the United States. Along with this, without specifying the name, although undoubtedly alluding to the murderer of the two Cuban women, they warned that they had not included on the list one of the released Americans who “had not been registered as a political prisoner.”
He also criticized “the lack of an official list that would allow for more precise verification, as in the past, people who were not registered as political prisoners, people who had been released long ago, and even people who had died in custody have been included.”
Maduro also confirmed this Monday that he had repatriated 8,743 migrants so far this year who, he said, were being held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prisons. Of these, 6,117 were men and 1,444 were women, including 623 boys, 559 girls, and 52 pregnant women.
In the first half of the year, the Venezuelan president continued, 47 migrant repatriation flights have been carried out, an average of eight trips per month.
Caracas agreed to accept deportees from the US in late January, after Richard Grenell, a special envoy for the Donald Trump administration, met with Maduro in the Venezuelan capital.
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