Ex-Marine convicted of killing three people in Spain released to US in prisoner swap deal
Dahud Hanid Ortiz, who was convicted last year in Venezuela of a triple homicide in Madrid, is one of the 10 US nationals that arrived in Texas last Friday.
'The United States welcomes home ten Americans who were detained in Venezuela,' Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said in a statement after the exchange.
'It is unacceptable that Venezuelan regime representatives arrested and jailed US nationals under highly questionable circumstances and without proper due process. Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland.'
Ortiz had been tried, convicted and sentenced last year in Venezuela of the murders. The White House did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment by time of publication.
A state department spokesperson did not discuss specifics of Ortiz's case when asked by the Guardian.
'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 state department spokesperson said. 'For privacy reasons, I won't get into the details of any specific case.'
Ortiz can be seen in two separate images, shared by a state department social media account. In one image, Ortiz is smiling and looking at the camera while sitting on a plane.
Last week, the US state department, coordinating with the Salvadoran and Venezuelan governments, participated in a large-scale prisoner swap between the three countries. 252 Venezuelans, previously detained in the US and expelled to a notorious Salvadoran prison under the Alien Enemies Act, were returned to Venezuela. In exchange, the US received 10 American nationals who were detained in Venezuela. Among them was Ortiz.
The Venezuelan NGO, Foro Penal, which tracks the movement of political prisoners in the country, released a notice on Monday, mere days after the prisoner swap, confirming the release of the 10 American prisoners. But, in their statement, they clarified that only nine of the US nationals released were 'political prisoners'.
'One of the 10 Americans/residents, who were formerly detained, was not classified as a political prisoner, which is why we only documented nine formerly detained,' the organization wrote, alluding to Ortiz's case.
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 offices and fled. Salas arrived shortly thereafter and discovered the three bodies, El País reported.
The ex-Marine and Iraq War veteran quickly left Spain and arrived in Germany shortly after the murders. Spanish officials, who investigated the case, began an international manhunt to track him down, but due to bureaucratic holdups, German police were unable to arrest him. Ortiz fled to Colombia and crossed the border into Venezuela, where he was later caught by officials in 2018.
Despite Spanish authorities' requests for Ortiz's extradition, Venezuela refused, deciding to try him for the murders there because he had been a Venezuelan citizen. In January 2024, he was sentenced by a Venezuelan court to 30 years in prison for the triple murder.
This Friday, Ortiz was released to the US and arrived in Texas on a flight, welcomed with open arms by Trump administration officials.
Salas, who was almost killed by Ortiz, told the Spanish TV program Vamos a Ver on Tuesday that he and the victims' families had been shocked by news of Ortiz's release.
'We all feel like we've been deceived, betrayed and let down,' he said. 'We feel deceived because Dahud Hanid Ortiz was never a political prisoner; he was a murderer who was convicted and sentenced by the Venezuelan authorities. The case record makes it quite clear that he's a criminal.'
Salas also questioned how José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – the former Spanish prime minister and a mediator between Venezuela and the US – could have acted as he did knowing 'who it was that he was freeing'. He called on Zapatero and others who had been 'kind enough to free someone who murdered three people' to take all necessary action to 'undo this injustice'.
The lawyer said he and the victims' families were afraid Ortiz could decide to return to Spain.
'The fear's always there,' he told the TV programme. 'The surprising thing in all this is that it was the German authorities who contacted me to say they were activating red alerts so that he's not allowed back into the Schengen area.'
Salas renewed his criticism of the Spanish government in an interview with TeleMadrid, saying the authorities had neither informed them of the murderer's release, nor offered them protection. 'The message they're sending out is that anyone can come to Spain, kill three people – and get away with it,' he said.
The lawyer added that 'the governments of Donald Trump and Maduro have just handed a killer his freedom – someone who's a real danger to society – without anyone bothering to provide a real explanation'.
In March of this year, the Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act, declaring that the Tren de Aragua gang was invading the US at the behest of the Venezuelan government. Hundreds of Venezuelan men, accused of being gang members, were quickly expelled to El Salvador and detained in the notorious CECOT prison.
The accusations that the men were all gang members was based on flimsy evidence by homeland security officials. After the quick and quiet expulsion to Venezuela, news organizations began revealing the identities of some of the men, including a gay Venezuelan makeup artist who was seeking asylum in the US.
'In the four months that the men were imprisoned in CECOT, the Trump administration repeatedly insisted that they were not under US custody,' said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst with the American Immigration Council, in a blog post. 'Rather, they claimed that El Salvador maintained sole custody over the men and the United States had no control over their fate.'
Reichlin-Melnick points out that the prisoner swap undermines the US's past statements, especially with the state department taking credit over the exchange, saying the deal happened 'thanks to President Trump's leadership'.
The American nationals detained in Venezuela made a quick stop in El Salvador before being flown into Texas. The 252 Venezuelan men detained by the US and El Salvador were flown to Venezuela.
The American nationals released include Wilbert Joseph Castañeda, Jorge Marcelo Vargas, Lucas Hunter, Jonathan Pagan Gonzalez, Ronald Oribio Quintana, Erick Oribio Quintana, Fabian Buglione Reyes, Renzo Huamanchumo Castillo, Juan Jose Faria Bricen and Ortiz, per CNN.
Although the nature of their arrests in Venezuela is not entirely known, one particular case stands out. Castañeda was detained by Venezuelan authorities in August 2024, along with two other Americans, two Spaniards and a Czech citizen. Although the US government and his family have repeatedly claimed Castañeda was in Venezuela for a personal trip, the Venezuelan government accused the group of men of participating in a CIA-led plot to overthrow the government and assassinate the president, Nicolás Maduro. Records accessed by Military.com confirmed Casañeda was a Navy Seal at the time of his arrest.
Earlier this month it was reported that the prisoner swap deal had been underway for some time, but that miscommunication between Trump administration officials botched it, the New York Times reported.
The US government has engaged in a number of prisoner swaps with Venezuela in recent years. Under the Biden administration in 2022, the US swapped seven Americans in exchange for two of Maduro's nephews. In 2023, the Venezuelan government released 10 American nationals and a US-wanted fugitive, for the exchange of Alex Saab, a close Maduro ally and former US government informant. And earlier this year, Venezuela freed six Americans after a Trump administration envoy met with Maduro.
Officials accused Ortiz of unsuccessfully attempting to pay Venezuelan authorities so that he could be included in the 2023 prisoner swap related to Saab, according to reporting from a Venezuelan newspaper.
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The Independent
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Using Tren de Aragua documents first recovered in 2022, Chilean prosecutor Bruno Hernández and his unit brought an unprecedented number of gang members to trial last year, dismantling the gang's northern Chile offshoot, known as Los Gallegos. 'It marked a milestone,' prosecutor Mario Carrera said last month from Arica's shantytown of Cerro Chuño, a Los Gallegos stronghold. 'Until then, they were acting with impunity." Following migrants to 'virgin territory' Tren de Aragua slipped into northern Chile in 2021, after the pandemic shut borders and encouraged Venezuelans to turn to smugglers as they fled their nations' crises and headed to Peru, Colombia and Chile. Héctor Guerrero Flores — a Tren de Aragua leader nicknamed 'Niño Guerrero' — dispatched managers to take over networks of 'coyotes' shepherding human cargo across Chile's desert borders. 'It was virgin territory from their perspective,' said Ronna Rísquez, the author of a book about the group. 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The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. I've received so many messages since he died saying: 'We didn't agree with him politically, but he helped my elderly parents'; 'He got support for my disabled child'; 'He visited my sick grandma in hospital.'' In some ways, his profile and accessibility made him vulnerable. He was the face of government and easy to locate. In fact, it later emerged that Ali had worked through a list of possible victims, including Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, both of who were deemed too complicated to find. Amess – targeted because he had voted in favour of airstrikes against Islamic State – was holding a surgery. (The pinned tweet on Amess's account gave the date, place and details of how to book.) 'I always worried about Dad's safety, but I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be a punch-up from a local yob,' says Katie. 'Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that a terrorist would go through a list and then come and murder your dad. It's just so shocking. It's still unbelievable.' In the immediate aftermath, the family were too stunned to think about inquiries or even formulate questions. Katie remembers flying straight back to the UK, walking into the family home and seeing the runner beans Amess had picked from the garden before going to surgery. 'I washed up his breakfast plates – tea and toast – from the morning it happened as well as his dinner plates from the night before and could not believe it was the last time I'd ever be doing this,' she says. 'All those times I was annoyed that he'd left his plates for me to clean when I was in his London flat for drama school. Now, I just wanted to be able to clean them one more time.' When details about Ali's history with Prevent began surfacing, the family assumed an inquiry would be announced after his trial. (In April 2022, Ali was given a whole-life sentence.) Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 'If that was true, why were three little girls murdered in Southport last year?' Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, was referred to and rejected by Prevent three times. One of the questions to be asked in the Southport inquiry is whether Prevent needs a complete overhaul. 'They could have asked that question years earlier after my dad was killed and perhaps Southport wouldn't have happened,' says Katie. Campaigning hasn't been easy. Katie is based in the US and her mother, Julia, is not well – she had a stroke shortly after Ali's trial, which the family attributes to trauma and grief. The change of government briefly gave them hope. Katie and Julia had a video meeting with Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, who told them that Amess was a great friend, their Westminster offices were next door and they used to walk to the Commons chamber together. 'We thought: 'Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere,'' says Katie. Instead, months passed. Finally, in March, in another video call, Cooper admitted there wouldn't be an inquiry. 'My mum said: 'Look me in the eyes and tell me as his friend that you think you're doing the right thing.' Yvette Cooper could not answer.' In a formal letter, Cooper explained that it was 'hard to see' how an inquiry could go beyond what had already been established in the trial, the Prevent learning review and the coroner's report, as well as the forthcoming rapid review by Lord Anderson. 'When an elected official is killed in a church hall in broad daylight by somebody the government is monitoring, there should be an inquiry – it shouldn't even be a question,' says Amess. 'This isn't a witch-hunt, but there should be some accountability. The mistakes made cost me my father, my mother's husband, a grandfather, a brother, a son. 'I don't think we'll ever recover,' she continues. 'It's my 40th birthday this month and I know I'd have flown back to England like I did every summer and my dad would have thrown me a huge party. There'd have been 40 balloons and he'd have made my friends give me 40 bumps! I want to have children, but I think: 'What sort of mother would I be now when I'm in so much trauma and heartache?' I used to think he'd be such a funny grandpa. All that has been robbed from me.' For Katie, the lack of support from Westminster after her father's decades of service is deeply painful and nonsensical, too. 'I just cannot believe the way we've been treated by his friends and colleagues,' she says. 'It's in all their interests. They are meeting the public day in, day out, so why don't they want to investigate properly and establish what would make them safer? Dad's legacy needs to be that through what happened to him, he saves other people. Please, just show some human decency. Do the right thing.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Top medical body concerned over RFK Jr's reported plans to cut preventive health panel
A top US medical body has expressed 'deep concern' to Robert F Kennedy Jr over news reports that the health secretary plans to overhaul a panel that determines which preventive health measures including cancer screenings should be covered by insurance companies. The letter from the the American Medical Association comes after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Kennedy plans to overhaul the 40-year old US Preventive Services Task Force because he regards them as too 'woke', according to sources familiar with the matter. During his second term, Donald Trump has frequently raged against organizations and government departments that he considers too liberal – often without any evidence. The US president, and his cabinet members such as Kennedy, have also overseen huge cuts and job losses across the US government. The taskforce is made up of a 16-member panel appointed by health and human services secretaries to serve four-year terms. In addition to cancer screenings, the taskforce issues recommendations for a variety of other screenings including osteoporosis, intimate partner violence, HIV prevention, as well as depression in children. Writing in its letter to Kennedy on Sunday, the AMA defended the panel, saying: 'As you know, USPSTF plays a critical, non-partisan role in guiding physicians' efforts to prevent disease and improve the health of patients by helping to ensure access to evidence-based clinical preventive services.' 'As such, we urge you to retain the previously appointed members of the USPSTF and commit to the long-standing process of regular meetings to ensure their important work can be continued without disruption,' it added. Citing Kennedy's own slogan of 'Making America healthy again,' the AMA went on to say: 'USPSTF members have been selected through an open, public nomination process and are nationally recognized experts in primary care, prevention and evidence-based medicine. They serve on a volunteer basis, dedicating their time to help reduce disease and improve the health of all Americans – a mission well-aligned with the Make America Healthy Again initiative.' According to the Affordable Care Act, public and private insurance companies must cover any services recommended by the Preventive Services Task Force without cost sharing. In a statement to MedPage Today, Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon did not confirm the reports, instead saying: 'No final decision has been made on how the USPSTF can better support HHS' mandate to Make America Healthy Again.' Reports of Kennedy's alleged decision to overhaul the taskforce come after the American Conservative published an essay earlier this month that described the taskforce as advocating for 'leftwing ideological orthodoxy'. It went on to accuse the panel of being 'packed with Biden administration appointees devoted to the ideological capture of medicine', warning that the 'continued occupation of an important advisory body in HHS – one that has the capacity to force private health insurers to cover services and procedures – by leftwing activists would be a grave oversight by the Trump administration'. In response to the essay, 104 health organizations, including the American Medical Association, issued a separate letter to multiple congressional health committees in which they urged the committees to 'protect the integrity' of the taskforce. 'The loss of trustworthiness in the rigorous and nonpartisan work of the Task Force would devastate patients, hospital systems, and payers as misinformation creates barriers to accessing lifesaving and cost effective care,' the organizations said. In June, Kennedy removed all 17 members of a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of vaccine experts. Writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he accused the committee of having too many conflicts of interest. Kennedy's decision to overhaul the immunization panel was met with widespread criticism from health experts, with the American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin calling the ouster 'a coup'. 'It's not how democracies work. It's not good for the health of the nation,' Benjamin said.
