The Colombian Jaime Saade, convicted of the rape and murder of his friend and compatriot Nancy Mariana in 1994, will spend Tuesday night behind bars in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, as explained at a press conference on Tuesday by the superintendent of the Federal Police Tatiana Alves.
The day before, Saade was arrested while trying to hide and avoid being extradited to Colombia to serve a sentence after three decades on the run.
Police chief Alves assured this Tuesday that he was caught by surprise: “I was coming back from a supermarket.
His first instinct was to flee, but when he saw the Military Police surrounding him, he ended up giving himself up.
he was alone.
He had no idea that he would be approached, ”she detailed.
A Military Police plane will take him to Belo Horizonte, next to the city where he lived for the last few years, where he will await his extradition to Colombia.
The commissioner highlighted the importance of the arrest and the key role of the victim's father, Martín Mestre, in order to capture him.
"Several years of searching for that person and a will from the father of the young woman murdered in Colombia for him to be extradited and answer for those crimes," she celebrated.
Saade is already at the disposal of the Colombian Justice, although his extradition, as usual in these cases, will ultimately depend on the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Saade was located on Monday by Brazilian police officers in a pension on the outskirts of Maceió, in the state of Alagoas, almost 2,000 kilometers away from Igarapé, the city on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais) where he lived in the last few years with a false identity.
He is married and has children.
The tranquility with which he walked through the municipality of Marechal Deodoro, in Alagoas, is what accompanied him throughout almost three decades, the time when he settled in Brazil and rebuilt his life.
The Brazilian authorities have given few details about his life in Brazil, although it is known that he used false documents to pose as a Brazilian citizen named Henrique dos Santos Abdala.
The time for Saade to start serving his sentence is closer than ever, after numerous obstacles in recent years.
In 1996, when he was already on the run, a judge sentenced him to 27 years in prison.
Given the lack of information about his whereabouts, the victim's father hired detectives, took courses and created false profiles on social networks to get close to the murderer's relatives and find him.
He got it in 2020. In January of that year, the Colombian was arrested in Belo Horizonte, although he only spent nine months in prison.
The Brazilian Justice accepted a request to revoke the pretrial detention.
Colombia asked for his extradition, but the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled against it.
There was a tie between the judges (two of them considered that the crime had already prescribed), which ended up benefiting the convicted person.
Saade disappeared again.
The victim's father did not give up;
He changed lawyers and appealed the decision of the Brazilian court, and this time he was luckier, he got the green light for the elusive murderer to serve time in his native Colombia.
The crime occurred in Barranquilla on New Year's Eve 1994. Nancy was 18 years old when she met Saade, 41. The relationship did not last long.
The young woman said goodbye to the year at home with her parents and her brother, and after midnight she went out to see her boyfriend, but she never came back.
Shortly thereafter, the girl's father learned that she was hospitalized for a gunshot wound to the head.
She died eight days later, after a slow agony that marked a crime that shocked Colombia and that is now about to be closed for good.
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