A man convicted of brutally killing three people in a savage ax attack was quietly freed by President Donald Trump in a prisoner swap with Venezuela, according to a bombshell report from El País.
Dahud Hanid Ortiz, an American citizen, was one of ten U.S. nationals released by Venezuela last week in exchange for the U.S. sending back 250 Venezuelan migrants.
Ortiz, however, wasn’t just any prisoner—he had been sentenced to 30 years in prison in Venezuela for a gruesome triple homicide.
“El País” confirmed Ortiz’s identity through sources in Spanish intelligence and Venezuela’s human rights group Foro Penal. The group clarified that while most of the released Americans were believed to be political prisoners, Ortiz was not. He was a convicted killer.
Ortiz had served in the Iraq War after gaining U.S. citizenship. In 2016, he killed three people in Madrid in a horrifying ax attack, slitting their throats. He fled to Venezuela after the murders, avoiding arrest until 2018. Venezuelan authorities finally sentenced him in 2024.
He returned to the U.S. on Friday, arriving in Texas and waving an American flag, El País reported.
Venezuelan Justice Minister Diosdado Cabello didn’t hold back. “We handed over some murderers for you,” he said.
Ortiz’s ex-wife, speaking to a German outlet, said she was told officials are now considering adding him to international police databases to keep him out of Germany.
Despite the controversy, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the deal.
“Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” he said, calling the swap a victory for Trump.
The State Department declined to answer questions from El País about Ortiz. Trump has not commented publicly.
