Martin Mestre, at his home in Barranquilla last December. Charlie Cordero
Martín Mestre is 80 years old and has cried so much that he is afraid of deluding himself.
Since January 1, 1994 he has only breathed for a single purpose.
See the murderer of his daughter behind bars.
For 26 years the search was in vain, but at the end of 2019, already almost a professional detective, he located him in Brazil.
The greatest of joys was followed by the greatest of disappointments.
A ruling by the Supreme Court, resolved by a draw, denied extradition to Colombia because the crime had already prescribed in Brazil.
The case was dead, just as Mestre stayed in his house in Barranquilla.
A team of lawyers from Washington decided not to give up and give this father without a daughter one last chance.
They filed a lawsuit to overturn the sentence and, to everyone's surprise, the Brazilian Court accepted the case.
Time keeps running against him.
In 1996, a Colombian judge sentenced Jaime Saade for the murder and rape of Nancy Mariana to 27 years in prison.
He was already missing, the earth had swallowed him since the night it all happened.
Next June the sentence that he has never served will end and, with it, any option to lock him up.
The decision of the Brazilian Court to convene a virtual hearing next time to decide whether to withdraw Saade's passport and thus prevent him from leaving Brazil is a breath of fresh air.
Then they must decide whether the extradition ruling was fair or should be overturned.
“The Court has been able to dismiss the case from the beginning and has not done so.
The arguments presented are quite convincing”, explains Margarita R. Sánchez, partner of Miller & Chevalier (Washington DC).
The lawsuit contends that the ruling misapplied Brazilian law.
First, having considered that the crimes for which Jaime Saade had been convicted in Colombia had prescribed in Brazil.
And, second, having decided the case through the figure of the tie, which is only valid for criminal actions.
“It is a case concerning the application of an extradition treaty between two sovereign nations, and as such it is a matter of international legal cooperation,” Sánchez underlines.
The facts
To understand the eternal struggle of this father, you have to travel to Barranquilla, on New Year's Eve 1993. The Mestres had dinner and welcomed the new year as a family.
Nancy Mariana, at the age of 18 who stayed forever, had been dating Jaime for some time and asked permission to celebrate the new year with him.
Martin has repeated a thousand times each step he took that night.
Saying goodbye to the couple, she addressed the young man.
"Take care of her," she told him.
Early in the morning he woke up with a start.
Her daughter had not returned and he went out into the streets to look for her.
He swore to God that if he found her, he would not scold her.
He drove to the Saade house and there he found her mother cleaning the floor.
It was six in the morning of the first day of 1994. "Her daughter had an accident, she is in the Caribbean Clinic," said the woman.
Once in the hospital, Jaime's father told him that Nancy Mariana had tried to take her life.
Nobody saw Jaime again.
The young woman agonized for eight days in which she never regained consciousness.
At the trial, which was held in the defendant's absence, her suicide was ruled out.
Jaime had sexually abused her and killed her with a shot to the head.
Current appearance of Jaime Saade, murderer of Nancy Mestre.
Barranquilla.Charlie Cordero
The years that followed were like chasing after a ghost.
Interpol issued a search warrant and Martín, as a member of the Navy reserve, took an intelligence course.
He searched every corner and became an Internet expert.
Through several false profiles on social networks, he managed to get closer to the Saade family.
In some conversation he jumped the name of a tourist complex called Belo Horizonte, in Santa Marta (Colombia).
Master turned him over.
What if he was in that city in Brazil?
He warned Interpol, who found a man there who called himself Henrique Dos Santos Abdala and bore a resemblance to the young Jaime of 1993. The saliva of a glass that he left one day in a bar served to verify that it was him.
26 years later.
Mestre was full.
He would finally see the murderer behind bars.
Dos Santos Abdala lived in Belo Horizonte with his wife and two of his children, and led an apparently normal life.
The extradition seemed done.
Colombia requested it and the discussion reached the Supreme Court of Justice, but in Brazil the cases prescribe after 20 years, with which the judges considered that the conviction was no longer valid, a point that the lawsuit now refutes.
Two judges voted in favor and two against.
The fifth was on leave.
The draw favored the condemned man, who returned to his daily life, calmer than ever.
Master sank.
From Washington, the team of lawyers pressured the Colombian government to revive the case.
The option of requesting extradition twice was unfeasible, but three letters were sent from the previous Executive, two from former Vice President Martha Lucía Ramírez, for Brazil to reconsider the case.
It didn't work.
The lawsuit was the last attempt, when everything seemed lost.
Now there are only eight months left to get Saade to comply, but there is an open window.
It is the one that Martín now looks at: “It has been like a little green light that turns on, hopefully it will be bright”.
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