Manuel Herrero, one of the 10 most wanted fugitives in Spain, appeared on September 6 at the National Court to put an end to his escape.. Mexico demands his surrender for allegedly murdering a man along with another person in Mexico City. They maintain that he placed the body in a drum, filled it with cement and hid it in the cellar of a home.. “He will have spoken with the lawyers, he has weighed it up and…”, police sources conclude..
Born in 1989 in Valladolid, Herrero first moved to the United Kingdom and then to Mexico, where he set up a security company and allegedly became involved in this crime in 2012, at the age of 23.. The Mexican authorities requested his arrest in 2019, when he was already back in Spain.. Herrero was already “living a normal life in Seville” and this allowed for a “clean arrest”. However, the National Court released him and his real escape began.. “It is what we call a repeat: he is detained, he is released and, when the surrender is going to proceed, he no longer appears”.
The Fugitive Location Section of the National Police began to tighten the fence around him starting in 2020.. “First in Seville, which is where he had rented a home, but then we moved throughout Spain and also checked on family and friends”. Thanks to his time in the United Kingdom, Herrero spoke English fluently, so as the months progressed, they ended up suspecting that he might have sought shelter abroad.. “We have made arrangements outside and we thought that Dubai could be there…”. According to what he himself acknowledged after turning himself in last week, he changed hiding places at least every six months.. Blue eyes. Slim build. Scar on left arm. Anchor-shaped tattoo on the left middle finger. They also included his photograph in the Europe's Most Wanted Fugitives list, managed by Europol, to try to ensure that citizen collaboration reached abroad and accelerated the investigation.. “It is usual in these cases. “A lot of the information that comes in makes no sense, but some of it seems good and other countries are asked to collaborate.”.
His photograph thus began to circulate throughout Europe, but by then, Herrero already presented a very different physical appearance.. The “thin build” was gone, and he also sported a beard and long hair.. “If you found him leaving a doorway, it would be very difficult to identify him with that photograph. Just by looking at his tattoo on his hand it would be clear that it was him…”. Some fugitives look for these types of physical changes to make their recognition difficult, but in the case of Herrero, the same sources do not rule out that his new self responds to the life he has led since 2020, moving from one place to another constantly, looking always above man.
He himself decided to put an end to this flight a week ago by appearing on his own before the National Court.. Of the 10 most wanted that made up that list of May 2022, five have already been arrested, but Herrero is the only one who has surrendered. The police pressure to which he had been subjected for three years had already become unbearable, and the supposed acquittal of others accused of the crime opened the door to a more encouraging scenario. The final decision remains in the hands of the National Court, which after his release in 2019, will now have to decide whether to put him on a plane to Mexico.