Jaime Saade, murderer of Nancy Mestre, arrives extradited to Colombia after 30 years on the run

With a gray shirt with blue and brown stripes, gray hair and a tired expression on Jaime Saade's face, this Thursday he concluded an escape that lasted a little more than 30 years. Convicted since 1996 of having sexually abused and then murdered Nancy Mestre, who was 18 years old, the 58-year-old man arrived on a commercial flight at El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, extradited from Brazil. Hidden under the identity of Henrique Dos Santos Abdala and living in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais, he remains under the orders of the First Court for the Execution of Sentences of his native Barranquilla, the city to which he is transferred in the afternoon of this same Thursday.

He returns to the Caribbean port that he abandoned in the first days of January 1994. He had celebrated that new year with Nancy Mestre, his partner. She was admitted to a clinic, Saade claimed that she had attempted suicide. After nine days in a coma, the young woman died. That same week, the person who appeared to be likely responsible for her fled: Forensic Medicine ruled that Nancy had not attempted suicide and, instead, she had been sexually abused and had been shot in the head.

The murder did not go unpunished, at least not in the courts: in 1996 a judge convicted Saade for the murder and rape of Nancy Mariana Mestre. The sentence was 27 years in prison, but, with the person responsible on the run, the sentence It never became effective. Not until now, thanks to the tenacity of Martín Mestre, Nancy's father, who spent years searching for the murderer of his daughter.

The search, which seemed endless, began to show signs of change at the end of 2019, when he found words like “Samaria” in the chats of people close to the Saades, which gave him a clue about his possible whereabouts. Mestre and two colonels who were working on the investigation linked it to Santa Marta, the port and resort a couple of hours from Barranquilla. Connecting the dots, they found the name of Belo Horizonte. There, the Brazilian police tracked him down. A glass that he drank from in some bar was used to compare fingerprints and confirm his identity.

In 2020, he was captured. His case escalated to the Supreme Court of Justice of Brazil, where it was discussed whether or not to extradite him. Two judges voted in favor, two against. The fifth was on leave and justice dictates that ties always favor the convicted person, so Saade was free. However, all was not lost. In a debate of legal technicalities about the prescription of his sentence, the court found that Saade was also accused of forgery and use of illegal documents, in a case that has not yet been tried, but it worked against him. In March 2023, shortly before he went unpunished as the case expired in Colombia, the Supreme Court gave the green light to his arrest. Arrested two weeks later, while fleeing through Brazil, his fate seemed cast. And this Thursday's photo, of a man surrounded by police while he arrives in Colombia, is how he demonstrates it.

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