Trump's Bringing In Murderers, He's Bringing In Rapists
At this rate he'll need to bring in someone to eat the dogs and cats.
Yesterday, we brought you the heartwarming story of how Donald Trump and his always winning administration secured the release from prison of nine US nationals being held hostage in Venezuela, as well as a tenth fellow in the group, Dahud Hanid Ortíz, a dual citizen of Venezuela and the US who was serving 30 years in prison for a grisly triple homicide he committed in Spain back in 2016. The 10 Americans were exchanged for 252 Venezuelan nationals the Trump administration sent without due process to CECOT, the infamous torture prison in El Salvador, claiming that they were all terrorist gangbangers with whom we’re at war. Funny how we stopped hearing about that war, huh?
Nobody outside the Trump administration knows yet how the hell Hanid Ortíz ended up being among the Americans freed by Venezuela, and nobody in the administration is saying a word about him. Maybe his attorneys directed bribes in the right direction. Or maybe it was a hilarious “fuck you” to Trump from the government of Nicolas Maduro.
On Wednesday, Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said on his weekly podcast that he’d warned US officials coming to Caracas for the prisoner exchange that there was a special guest prisoner among the detainees.
“I even said at the airport that they were asking for a murderer. They are taking a convicted murderer with them,” Cabello explained.
In any case, Trump’s people knew exactly what to do! They let him go, according to two anonymous insiders who spoke to the New York Times (gift link) and other outlets.
One of the sources said that Hanid Ortíz is in Orlando, Florida, perhaps in hopes that someone will ask him, “You brutally murdered three people with a machete and an iron rod, were sentenced to 30 years in prison in Venezuela, and then somehow Donald Trump let you go! What are you doing next?”
The Times does note that American officials in the Biden administration knew who Hanid Ortiz was, and that they specifically excluded him from previous prisoner exchanges with Venezuela. Because actually, contra what Donald Trump kept jabbering during last year’s presidential campaign, Biden wasn’t letting in murderers. Trump was taking the murderers Biden had found and detained, and letting them out to make room for Abuela instead.
Every accusation, and all that.
But to the matter at hand:
In 2023, officials in the Biden administration who had learned of his detention in Venezuela decided not to take him as part of a different prisoner swap, according to a former U.S. official. The official said that the Spanish authorities had asked the United States to send him to Spain, but that Spanish officials ultimately decided against this — and the Department of Justice decided it didn’t want him in the United States.
The Times adds that it’s unclear whether Spain can seek extradition, since Hanid Ortiz was already convicted and sentenced in Venezuela and did (a small portion of his sentenced) time there.
The story also notes that Venezuela’s constitution forbids extradition of its citizens to other countries, which is why Hanid Ortíz was tried in Venezuela, with evidence from prosecutors from Spain and Germany, where he lived after being discharged from the US Army for larceny and fraud, so there’s a detail we hadn’t known. He was convicted and sentenced last year.
Also too, eight of the 10 American citizens and permanent residents brought back to the US last weekend were declared to be “wrongfully imprisoned,” a status that allows them to receive support services once they return to the US. Hanid Ortíz wasn’t granted that status and, according to the inside sources, was never offered those services.
Neither the Times nor any other outlets have yet found out how Hanid Ortíz got included with the other Americans, or whether his release to roam Florida at will was the result of a fuckup or a deliberate decision. Maybe we’ll all forget, as long as he doesn’t get caught murdering anyone else in the next few months. Perhaps he’s learned his lesson.
Heck, maybe he’ll spill all the beans to a detective and then just walk out of the cop shop like Keyser Söze, never to be seen again. In any case, no worries. He may have murdered three people a while back, but he didn’t cross the US border without papers, so he’s no more threat to Americans than Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator in raping young teens, Ghislaine Maxwell, who for all we know may be walking free soon as well, thanks to Trump.
[NYT (gift link) / El País / WaPo]
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Those murders in Spain:
"Ortiz carried out a violent murder in Madrid, Spain, in 2016 which made international headlines. According to press reports, in a fit of jealousy, Ortiz drove from Germany to Spain to track down his ex-wife’s new partner, Víctor Joel Salas, an attorney based in Madrid. Ortiz had previously threatened Salas, a Spanish newspaper reported.
Ortiz entered Salas’s office and instead found two women, employees of the law firm. He stabbed the two women and waited for Salas to enter the office. When a taxi driver and client of the law firm entered, Ortiz stabbed the man, set fire to the law firm’s offices and fled. Salas arrived shortly thereafter and discovered the three bodies, El País reported..."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/23/ex-marine-released-prisoner-swap-deal
So this guy is free and the man he intended to murder is still alive-as is the ex-wife. If Ortiz can't be locked up, maybe his intended victims should seek protective custody.
It gets dumber every day.