A court in Caracas (Venezuela) has sentenced former US Marine Dahud Hanid Ortiz to 30 years in prison for killing three people in a law office in the Madrid neighborhood of Usera in 2016, considering it proven that he was the author of the three homicides. and the arson afterwards.
As sources from the prosecution have informed Efe, the judge in charge of the process read, in a hearing held this Tuesday, the sentence in which he considers the facts of which Hanid Ortiz was accused to have been proven and sentences him to 30 years in prison, maximum provided in Venezuelan legislation.
The sentence assesses the witness statements, many from Spanish police officers who carried out the investigation, and the evidence exhibited at the trial, such as reports on mobile phones and security camera recordings, the sources detail.
The events occurred on June 22, 2016 when former marine Dahud Hanid Ortiz traveled from Germany, where he lived, to Madrid, driven by jealousy and entered the law office of Víctor Joel Salas, in the Usera neighborhood, to kill him, believe 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 -, set the 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 to a court in Caracas in 2019 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 was held in its entirety. The magistrate convened the hearing to read the sentence for December.
But Dahud Hanid did not appear and the accusations feared that he had fled since this moment coincided with the decision of the Madrid court that initially handled the case to annul the international arrest warrant against him, understanding that the case had already been tried, according to Víctor Joel Salas.
After several days of uncertainty, the judge explained this week that the accused was in an immigration center in Caracas and called the parties to a hearing for this Tuesday, in which he read the sentence.
At that hearing, the magistrate explained that on December 8 he received a letter from the Attorney General’s Office in which he communicated that the accused was going to be transferred to Spain “for humanitarian reasons” and the court agreed to the deportation, but the Spanish authorities refused. they opposed.
Thus, the accused remained at the disposal of Interpol-Venezuela, which sent a letter to the court to consult on the fate of the accused, who was provisionally placed at the disposal of the Immigration Service in an immigration center, until the judge regained jurisdiction to finish the process issuing the sentence.
