US defends repatriation of triple murderer who slipped into the prisoner exchange with Venezuela: ‘Many reported being subjected to torture’

Since his return to the White House last January, and even earlier on the campaign trail, Donald Trump has defended his ruthless immigration policy on the assumption that other countries send their worst criminals to commit crimes in the United States. But on Friday it was his own administration that imported the perpetrator of a triple murder committed in Madrid, Spain. He is a U.S. citizen of Venezuelan origin who is known in Spanish police, judicial and media circles as “the triple murderer of Usera.” His name is Dahud Hanid Ortiz.

He didn’t arrive in shackles and an orange jumpsuit. Instead he was brandishing a little flag with the Stars and Stripes and a grin from ear to ear. It is not yet clear how Ortiz slipped into a group of ten U.S. men released by the Chavista regime of Nicolás Maduro and presented to the country’s public opinion as “political prisoners” who were “wrongfully arrested.”

On Wednesday, a State Department spokesperson responded in an e-mail to EL PAÍS that with the exchange, which also allowed the return to their home country of 252 Venezuelan prisoners deported by Washington to El Salvador, where they had been imprisoned, “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 reply added that for “privacy reasons” the State Department would not go into the details of any specific case.

The group that flew back to the U.S. included tourists who, according to democracy activists in Venezuela, Maduro uses as a bargaining chip. Ortiz’s case is very different: he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2024, following his arrest in 2018 for a triple murder committed in Madrid two years earlier.

The whereabouts of the 54-year-old criminal, who on Friday was seen waving to the camera after landing with the rest of the released prisoners at a military airport outside the city of San Antonio, Texas, are unknown.

On Tuesday, the State Department said at a press conference by Secretary Marco Rubio’s spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, that “As of Friday evening there are no wrongfully detained Americans in Venezuela, and we want to keep it that way.” Bruce did not specify whether Ortiz was considered wrongfully imprisoned, or whether she was, in fact, only referring to the other nine individuals.

Later, a senior official of the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, John McNamara, said in an interview with a Venezuelan journalist that “all U.S. citizens held in Venezuela are now free, free in their own land, with their own families.”

EL PAÍS also tried unsuccessfully to obtain answers from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice as to whether Ortiz has been imprisoned and where, or if he is walking free on the streets of the United States, where there is little trace of his years before emigrating.

Ortiz was tried and convicted in Venezuela because he escaped there after committing his crime in Spain on Wednesday, June 22, 2016. He had family in Puerto Ordaz, an oil city in Venezuela’s Orinoco Basin. According to investigative sources in Venezuela, he worked in the electrical components trade until he was finally arrested in October 2018. Spain requested his extradition, but as per a bilateral agreement, Venezuela took over the case as he was a citizen of Venezuelan origin.

Spanish prosecutorial sources indicated that they have requested information from the United States, but have not yet received a reply. They explained that from the judicial point of view, Spain cannot do anything because the case has been tried and Venezuela is in charge of executing the sentence. These sources also do not know if there has been any kind of pardon by the Chavista regime. The matter is so sensitive that no Spanish authority wants to make any statement.

The triple murder of Usera

Ortiz’s crime caused a commotion in Spain and received so much media attention it became known as “the triple murder of Usera,” in reference to the working-class district of Madrid where it happened. It was a killing motivated by jealousy. Ortiz was a former U.S. Marine who got married in Germany to Irina Trippel. He had joined the military in 1995 and met his wife while serving at the U.S. base in Schweinfurt, east of Frankfurt. He was kicked out in 2014 for falsifying documents to receive a grant. Thus began a personal decline that affected the relationship.

Ortiz and Trippel were already living apart in April 2016, when she met the lawyer Victor Salas, 36, who owns a law firm in the Spanish capital. When he found out, the ex-Marine flew into a rage, investigators in the case in Spain concluded. In May, he called Salas from Germany and told him: “I was a soldier in the United States. I’ve been trained to kill and I’m going to come after you to kill you. I know who you are. Leave Irina alone, she is my wife.” Salas replied that he could come get him whenever he wanted.

According to the investigation, Ortiz was living at the home of Trippel’s mother, Larisa, and was trying to rebuild the relationship with his ex-partner, with whom he was still on speaking terms. On Monday, June 20, he left in the mother’s old Volkswagen Polo. On Wednesday, June 22, around 2:30 p.m., he arrived at Salas’ office, located at 40 Marcelo Usera Street. The lawyer was not there. He had spent the morning at the Plaza de Castilla courthouse. Two employees let in Ortiz, who told them that he needed to speak with their boss about a €1 million case. One of them called Salas to inform him that a “strange” guy was looking for him and that he had gone into the bathroom. Salas, who planned to return around 5 p.m., suggested to his employee that she ask the visitor to come back later.

“I was saved by pure chance,” Salas recalled Wednesday. “I’m not superstitious but the thing is that after eating at home with my mother I was so tired that I stretched out on the bed in the shape of a cross and said to myself, ‘today I want to live.’”

He fell asleep. When he woke up at 5:42 p.m., he called the office and was surprised because no one answered, according to the case file in Spain. At 6:10 p.m., he arrived at the office on a motorcycle and saw two clients waiting out in the street. Black smoke was coming out of the window.

As investigators later found out, Ortiz used a knife to kill the two employees, Elisa Consuegra Gálvez, 31, and Maritza Osorio Riverón, 51; and a client who had stopped by to pick up some papers, the cab driver Pepe Castillo Vega, 42. He then set fire to the office and fled.

Ortiz re-emerged on Thursday June 23rd in Germany. Trippel had no doubt that he had committed the crime. Hours after the attack his phone was not giving a signal. He explained that he had accidentally left his cell phone in airplane mode. He also said that he had moved in with a friend from college whom they had never heard of. This didn’t make sense because he had barely taken a couple of things from the mother-in-law’s house.

A court took over the investigation of the case. Initially, the judge did not set his sights on Ortiz, who thus had time to catch a plane from Germany to Venezuela before an international arrest warrant could be issued for him.

Following his arrest in 2018, a trial was held before the 15th Court of Caracas, which handed down a 30-year prison sentence on January 9, 2024. Ortiz appealed to the Eighth Chamber of the Court of Appeals, which on July 31 upheld the decision. Lastly, he had appealed to the Venezuelan Supreme Court.

He is now far from Caracas. Perhaps he is still in Texas. It is not clear if he is free, or ready to serve the rest of his sentence for the Usera triple murder in a U.S. prison.

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