They say that justice takes time, but it arrives.
This is the case of
Nancy Mestre,
a young Colombian high school student who was raped and murdered in the early morning of January 1, 1994.
His murderer,
Jaime Saade Cormane
, was captured in 2020 in Belo Horizonte, in Brazil.
He spent 26 years on the run from justice, because he escaped the same day of the macabre crime.
The business administrator and member of a high society family was sentenced in absentia in his country in July 1996.
25 years in prison for the crime of homicide and 2 years for violent carnal access.
Jaime Saade and Nancy Mestre, perpetrator and victim.
Saade—sentenced to 27 years in prison by a Colombian court in absentia in 1996 for murdering and raping Nancy Mestre—was arrested in 2020 by Interpol, but Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) denied his extradition to Colombia that same year.
Mestre did not lower her arms, she appealed the decision and waited, although time was against her because the crime, according to the laws of her country, prescribes this year.
On Tuesday, the STF magistrates met again and by majority vote
approved Saade's extradition.
The decision was made by the Second Chamber of the Brazilian high court, which re-analyzed the case.
Saade will be handed over to the Colombian authorities so that he can finish serving the sentence that was imposed on him for homicide.
His extradition for rape has already prescribed.
The Colombian Justice will have to discount the time that the man was imprisoned in Brazil.
a heartbreaking story
The story of Martín Mestre, a father who for years searched for his daughter's murderer, is one of deep pain.
The last time he saw his daughter was at the door of his house after toasting with his wife and his two children.
One of them, Nancy Mariana, who was 18 years old, had asked permission to celebrate the New Year away from home and with Jaime Saade, with whom she had been dating for some time.
Mestre came out to see them off.
"Come back at three," he reminded her.
“Take care of her for me”, she asked him.
The latter is the memory that Mestre has of his daughter, according to the newspaper El País of Spain.
On the morning of January 1, 1994, Martín woke up and felt that his daughter had not come home at three in the morning as he had requested, and he began a search through several nightclubs until he reached Jaime Saade's house.
Martin Mestre and his daughter Nancy Mestre.
“Jaime's mother was cleaning her son's apartment, attached to her house.
At dawn on the first day of the year.
The whole floor was wet.
The woman looked at him and said: her daughter had an accident, she is in the Caribbean Clinic ”, was the cruel story that Martín received.
Upon arriving at the medical center,
Saade told her that her daughter had attempted suicide by shooting herself with a firearm.
Nancy was in the clinic and days later she died, but the strangest thing was the disappearance of Jaime Saade, who was never heard from again to clarify what happened.
“In 1996, a Colombian judge sentenced Saade to 27 years in prison for the murder and rape of Nancy Mariana, despite being missing.
Suicide was ruled out”,
says the newspaper El País.
And before this sentence, Martín began the search for Saade by heaven and earth.
Martín took an intelligence course and with four false profiles on social networks he began to get closer to the Saade family,
The murderer and the image of the murdered young woman.
Maestre's expertise along with two colonels who helped him with the investigation led them to find Saade in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, after analyzing many conversations and posts they were reviewing from Jaime's relatives.
Interpol tracked down a man who matched the features of Jaime Saade, but his name was Henrique Dos Santos Abdala, married with two children.
The Brazilian police investigated him and thanks to the print they found on a glass he used in a bar, they knew it was him.
The different faces of the murderer.
"God's times are perfect.
Everything has to be as He indicates that it should be.
At no time did I doubt that we were going to achieve it.
I asked God to give me tenacity and time to continue in this fight so that my daughter's crime would not go unpunished.
That the murderer Jaime Saade Cormane will pay for what he did: the torture and sexual abuse that he did to my daughter in order to later murder her, ”Martín told the newspaper El Heraldo de Colombia.