Elisa Consuegra Gálvez and Maritza Osorio Riverón were killed in 2016 in Madrid by Exmarine Dahud Hanid Ortiz. Condemned to 30 years in Venezuela, he was recently released as part of an exchange of prisoners between Caracas and Washington.
Madrid, Spain.- Elisa Consuegra Gálvez and Maritza Osorio Riverón were two Cuban women with full lives and projects ahead. Elisa, who would turn 40 this year, exercised as a lawyer, and Maritza as secretary, both in a legal office in the Madrid neighborhood of Usera.
In June 2016, both were brutally murdered with an Ecuadorian client by Dahud Hanid Ortiz, an exarine with dual American and Venezuelan nationality, motivated by a passionate crime. Eight years later, the murderer has been released and repatriated to the United States as part of an exchange of prisoners between the governments of Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro.
The case has caused outrage among the relatives of the victims and in Spain, where crime had been judged as one of the most atrocious registered in Madrid in the last decade.
Ortiz was included, in recent days, among a group of American political prisoners exchanged for Caracas, despite having a Firm sentence of 30 years in prison in triple homicide issued at the beginning of 2024.
A premeditated and wild crime
On June 22, 2016, Dahud Hanid Ortiz broke into the lawyer’s office Victor Joel Salas, Located at number 40 of Marcelo Usera Street, with the intention of killing him by jealousy. Not finding it, he downloaded his fury about who were there: Elisa Consuegra, Maritza Osorio and an Ecuadorian client, whom he stabbed. Then he set fire to the premises and fled the country, starting a leak that took him through Germany, Colombia and finally Venezuela, where he was captured in October 2018.
Ortiz, who was trained as Marine in the US. According to the investigation, he acted for a feeling of revenge after the rupture of a relationship with a woman close to Salas.
Condemned in Venezuela, released by the US.
Instead of being extradited to Spain, as requested by the National Court, Ortiz was tried in Caracas. The Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela rejected extradition in 2019 and maintained the case in its jurisdiction. In January 2024 he was sentenced to 30 years in prison after a long judicial instruction, which included forensic evidence sent from Madrid.
However, this month his name appeared among the ten American citizens released by Venezuela as part of a exchange promoted by Donald Trump, as president and current diplomatic interlocutor of Washington before Maduro’s regime. The agreement also implied the release of 252 Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.
What was initially presented as a humanitarian gesture to recover “unjustly detained political prisoners” actually included a convict murderer, as confirmed by the Criminal Forum NGO and media as The country, and BBC. So far, it has not been confirmed that Ortiz is in custody in the United States. Diplomatic sources have indicated that it would be free in American territory, which further aggravates the feeling of impunity around the case.
Silence from Cuba
While relatives of the victims, the lawyer Víctor Salas – real objective of the attack – and human rights organizations have expressed their public outrage, the Cuban government has kept absolute silence. The Foreign Ministry (Minrex), the Attorney General’s Office and official media have not issued any declaration on the liberation of the murderer of two Cuban citizens.
Nor have public support been offered to the families of Elisa and Maritza or explanations have been demanded to the governments involved, although the exchange was managed by Nicolás Maduro, a political ally of Havana. This contrasts with the usual belligerent tone of Cuban ruling when it comes to measures taken by Washington.
Victims without full justice
Elisa Consuegra Gálvez and Maritza Osorio Riverón were collateral victims of a personal revenge executed brutally. They were workers, loved by their colleagues, with a future ahead. Years after its deaths, the judicial process seemed to have concluded with the convenient’s condemnation, but geopolitics and convenience pacts have revoked, de facto, that sentence.
