WASHINGTON (TNND) — One of the 10 Americans freed from a Venezuelan prison last week had been previously convicted in Venezuela for murdering three people in Spain in June 2016, according to records.

Dahud Hanid Ortiz, an American-Venezuelan dual national, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2023 for a triple-homicide in Madrid, court documents revealed.

Records show Hanid Ortiz is a former member of the U.S. military and planned to murder a lawyer who had a relationship with his wife. Once he arrived at the lawyer's office in Madrid, he killed two women and a man he mistook for the lawyer.

An extradition request from the Spanish government detailed the deaths as violent, with one woman being killed with a "large knife, or machete, with a saw-toothed blade." The second woman and man were presumed to have been killed with an iron bar.

After the murders, records said Hanid Ortiz lit the office on fire "with the clear intention of destroying any evidence that might remain at the scene."

According to the extradition request, Hanid Ortiz confessed to the murders in an email to his wife's sister, stating: "I did terrible things."

"I am responsible for everything, and now I am bad, I lost my mind and stopped thinking," he wrote.

Venezuela released 10 Americans on Friday in exchange for migrants deported by the U.S. to El Salvador under the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

The resolution represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, helps President Donald Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad, and lands El Salvador a swap that it had proposed months ago.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio thanked Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for securing the agreement.

"Our commitment to the American people is clear: we will safeguard the well-being of U.S. nationals both at home and abroad and not rest until all Americans being held hostage or unjustly detained around the world are brought home," Rubio said in a release.

El Salvador will send back some 300 Venezuelan migrants after the Trump administration agreed to pay $6 million to house them in a notorious Salvadoran prison. The arrangement drew immediate blowback when Trump invoked an 18th-century wartime law to quickly remove men his administration had accused of belonging to the violent Tren de Aragua street gang.

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Editor's note:The Associated Press contributed to this article.