U.S. prisoner returned by Venezuela in swap was convicted of 3 murders

Dahud Hanid Ortíz, 54, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in Venezuela for the 2016 killings at a law office in Spain.

Updated
July 23, 2025 at 7:07 p.m. EDTyesterday at 7:07 p.m. EDT
5 min

By Maham Javaid, Adam Taylor, María Luisa Paúl, Karen DeYoung and Samantha Schmidt

A U.S. citizen who was released by the Venezuelan government last week in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Trump administration was serving a 30-year sentence there for the murders of three people in Spain, officials familiar with the case said.

Dahud Hanid Ortíz, 54, was one of 10 U.S. citizens and permanent residents released by Venezuela in the high-profile swap on Friday. In return, Venezuela received more than 250 Venezuelan nationals who had been deported by the United States to a megaprison in El Salvador.

“This person, a Venezuelan and U.S. national, committed a serious crime in Spain and fled to Venezuela,” said one person with knowledge of the case, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. “The Venezuelan courts tried him and, in 2024, sentenced him to 30 years in prison for the three murders committed in Spain.”

A U.S. official said the administration had declined previous opportunities to bring Hanid Ortíz home.
Hanid Ortíz killed two employees and a client at a law office in the Madrid in 2016 and then set it on fire, a Venezuelan court found last year. He escaped to Germany, where he had served with the U.S. Army, and then to his native Venezuela, where he was eventually arrested.

In describing last week’s prisoner exchange, the State Department emphasized the wrongful imprisonment of Americans in Venezuela. S ecretary of State Marco Rubio said more Americans had been detained “under highly questionable circumstances without proper due process” in Venezuela than in any other country. Now, he said, “every wrongfully detained American” in Venezuela had been released; he thanked President Donald Trump for securing their “freedom.”

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/23/ortiz-murder-venezuela-trump-prisoner-swap-bukele-el-salvador-spain/



Dahud Hanid Ortíz