I grabbed a ten-inch Tramontina kitchen knife I had to hand, stuck it in my belt and pulled on a jumper to go over the top. I shut and padlocked the cell door as fast as I could. We descended the stairs into the bowels of the prison from the refined third floor. The smells got worse the nearer the ground floor you were, what with the rat-infested, cockroachteeming drains that stank of raw sewage and rotting food. It used to make me gag sometimes if it was a particularly hot day and everything had putrefied that bit quicker.
We were heading towards D wing, Sasha leading the way, pushing people aside as he went. My heart was pounding with fear and the anticipation of what I was about to witness. A few friends asked what the hurry was as we rushed past them. I didn’t have time to stop and reply but shouted out, ‘They’re killing Ruben in D wing.’
We reached the main gate to the wing that led on to the centre – the circular area where all the wings converged. We passed through and turned to the right, through the unattended gate, unhindered by guards who would normally have demanded a dollar. There were two reasons for this, the first being it was a visit day and they generally didn’t charge you on these days. The second, main reason was the screams and shouts emanating from within D wing, the gate to which stood wide open as people streamed in and out. As we entered D wing there was a large crowd of men, women and children gathered directly in front of me midway down the wing. People lined the walkways that led to the cells on the upper floors and ran the length of the wing on both sides, watching fixatedly the spectacle below them. I could feel the tension and see the horror etched on the faces of some of the sobbing women who passed us by, carrying their confused and startled young children.
Sasha beckoned me to follow him towards the crowd but also to the cell of his best friend, a Russian Israeli by the name of Lev. As we skirted round the edge of the crowd I caught my first glimpse of the huge pool of gleaming dark red blood. In the centre of this congealing pool lay slumped the torn, cut, bleeding, crying and slowly dying body of someone I thought was going to be Ruben, the grey-haired friendly grandfather. It wasn’t, and I was momentarily relieved. Until I saw the figure standing over the dying man with a large blood-covered knife in his hand.
Sasha explained that the dying man was an Ecuadorian by the name of Ruben, which is a fairly unusual name in South America. He was a notorious informant who had been responsible for imprisoning many people. He had more recently been causing all sorts of problems for his fellow inmates by informing directly to the police via a mobile phone supplied by them. He had been reporting details of illegal activity within the prison, in which cells the perpetrators lived and where their stashes were hidden. Unfortunately for him, some of the people he was responsible for incarcerating had ended up on the same wing as him and weren’t in the least bit happy about it. Bad enough simply being in the same prison, but the same wing – you just knew what was going to happen. There had apparently been rumours circulating the whole prison that Ruben was about to be killed. Someone had even done him the courtesy of warning him that his life was in imminent danger and he should probably change wings. He had, for some reason, ignored these warnings and said he wasn’t afraid of these people and that they could do their worst. That had been a fatal mistake. They had done their worst.
The killer was a thin, unassuming guy in his early twenties and of Ecuadorian appearance. He had emerged from one of the last cells on the right-hand side of the wing carrying a large kitchen knife, similar to the one I had down my trouser leg. I could feel the cold steel pressed against my skin and the thought of that entering my body and virtually passing right through me, tearing and ripping organs and blood vessels as it went, stopped my breath. I had had a recurring nightmare as a kid of being stabbed in the back; I would wake up screaming, arching my back, drenched in sweat. I had always wondered if this was a premonition of my death to come. Would this be the place it happened? People were stabbed here nearly every day.
The crowd were enthralled, waiting for the killer to start attacking Ruben again. We all stood around watching – guards, prisoners, visitors, me – yet no one intervened. I don’t know if it was out of fear of being attacked as well or reprisals afterwards for having stopped this notorious informant being killed, but no one moved. The skinny young guy with the large knife circled Ruben like a lion round its prey. He had the wild-eyed look of murder on his face. He was coated in blood. He looked as though he had dipped both his arms in buckets of red paint. Abattoir workers have less blood on them.
‘Ahora tu va moria,’ he kept repeating, ‘now you are going to die’ – among the profanities he was spitting. Ruben didn’t really respond much apart from the odd wheeze and rasp and moan. The killer circled a couple more times, appraising his victim, deciding where next he was going to plunge the 12 inches of Brazilian steel. He struck, driving the knife deep into Ruben’s stomach. The crowd groaned, women cried, I felt sick. The killer continued stabbing wildly. Ruben made a few feeble attempts at blocking the strikes to begin with but soon lost consciousness, no doubt from blood loss. A Sunday afternoon in the prison in Quito: children running around playing while a human being was slowly butchered to death in the middle of a wing with guards and visitors looking on. The guards had no doubt been paid to turn a blind eye. Ruben’s informing no doubt affected them too – they relied on illicit trade and bribes to subsidise their meagre incomes.
‘You want tea with me and Lev? We have good strong Russian chai, not your P.G. Tips,’ Sasha said. ‘Come, we make tea, you feel better. This horrible, no good.’ I agreed. The sweet metallic smell of blood filled the air as it seeped from the puncture wounds all over Ruben’s body. It made me want to retch.
I greeted Lev and took a seat in his cell while they went about making tea and chatting away in Russian. I could still hear the killer, inflicting wounds now on a corpse.
‘You want something to eat? We have sandwich, cake, biscuits.’ Sasha offered a pack of biscuits across the table. He went on to explain that the guy doing the killing was what they referred to here as a comi muerto, which translated as ‘eat the dead’. They were inmates who had committed multiple counts of murder and were sentenced to 25 years with no parole, or sometimes even whole-life terms. They stood very little chance of walking out alive, so had nothing to lose. You were lucky if you survived five years in one of these prisons, let alone 25.
The gangs or cartel members would pay these comi muertos with money or drugs to carry out murders for them, knowing it wouldn’t make any difference to their sentence. They would usually jump at the opportunity to earn some extra money. They didn’t have to be careful about leaving behind evidence, they would just openly kill whoever was the target. Whoever had orchestrated this killing had paid someone within the prison authorities to have the killer transferred to this wing from the high-security one where he normally lived to carry out the murder. A working vacation in some ways for this guy. A break from the isolation of maximum security to do a job and then back to wait for the next contract to come up. You would have no idea that the quiet, thin guy standing next to you was a half-crazed murderer responsible for the deaths of several people.
We heard later that Ruben eventually bled out after about half an hour of being repeatedly stabbed. The comi muerto killer then returned to the cell he had been using, and calmly sat down at the table upon which were arranged his crack pipe, crack, lighter, cigarettes and ashtray. He loaded a pipe and proceeded to smoke it as if nothing had happened. It reminded me of an advert for cigars where the person smokes one while reminiscing on the day’s events. He had placed the kitchen knife on the table and was just sitting there smoking. It was only at this point that the guards decided to intervene. The action was over, the task accomplished and the threat to them now minimal. They placed handcuffs on the killer, picked up the knife and led him out of the wing to isolation. He went quietly without protest or resistance and that was that.
I decided I had seen enough and made my way back to my cell before t
he police arrived with the forensic team and started asking questions. They generally didn’t investigate too much. One less criminal in the country, one less inmate burdening the government. They had the killer, the weapon, the body and plenty of witnesses – what more did they need? Case closed.
I wandered back to my cell in a daze, shocked at what I had just seen, with the smell of Ruben’s blood lingering in my nose. I sat on my bed and wondered how the hell I was going to survive the next however many years I was destined to be locked up with people who would happily kill you for a onedollar rock of crack cocaine.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PARO!
THE COMMITTEE DEEPLY deplores the situation in [Ecuador’s] detention centres and especially in social rehabilitation centres where prisoners’ human rights are constantly violated. The overcrowding, corruption and poor physical conditions prevailing in prisons, and especially the lack of hygiene, proper food and appropriate medical care, constitute violations of rights which are protected under the Convention (art.11) … The Committee notes with concern the allegations that a large number of prisoners have been tortured while being held incommunicado.
U.N. Committee against Torture, 2005.
‘Paro, paro!’
Oh no, here we go again! I was standing outside a friend’s cell when I heard the cry. Other inmates started rushing to the main gate with thick metal chains, guns drawn. The entrance to the wing was locked. I could see and hear the same taking place on the other wings. All the guards had beaten a hasty retreat out of the wings in fear of their lives. A couple of gunshots rang out. People were shouting, cell doors banging shut or swinging open. The police were calling in reinforcements and quickly surrounding the prison, weapons at the ready, in case there should be a mass escape attempt. After a short while we heard a police helicopter circling overhead. I wondered how many days or weeks this might last. Better start conserving food and water supplies now, just in case, and charge all the phones and spare batteries.
This wasn’t the first time I had experienced a paro, which would in Europe or America be called a protest or riot. The main difference here was that we generally wouldn’t destroy the cells, as we had paid for everything ourselves and would only have to replace it afterwards. Following my arrest on 16 August 2005 there had been numerous protests at the terrible conditions in the prisons – the overcrowding, lack of food and medical care. The laws that benefitted the prisoners were virtually all suspended and had been replaced by secure detention (prisión en firme), which basically meant you could be detained indefinitely without trial as long as you had been charged. All cells had to have three people living in them, which was the minimum allowed in Quito, while others had as many as seven or eight. The comité de internos, or prisoners’ committees, had been organising a series of protests, some of them on a national level, with all prisons locking their entrances at exactly the same minute on the same day.
On a couple of occasions when the gates were locked on visit days, visitors had, in effect, been held hostage sometimes for several days. The visitors would quite often be more than willing to act as hostages as it was their family members who were being held, causing them all to suffer. None of them were ever injured as the visitors were viewed as sacrosanct.
I headed back to my cell with a few friends. We would stick together during these paros as they could be very dangerous. I collected a large steak knife and waited for Mario to come over with Andrew from D wing with the handgun I had bought us. I would feel a hell of a lot safer with a gun and a good-sized group of us to fend off any attacks. I could already see little groups roaming around looking to settle scores and collect outstanding debts. People were starting to don long jackets, which usually covered the presence of a machete or shotgun. It was always alarming to see how drastically people’s attitudes would change when a paro started. Someone who was perhaps friendly before would become very stand-offish and defensive. It made you realise that you had very few real friends in the prison. When any form of control or discipline was temporarily removed, situations that previously might have simmered away would quickly erupt into extreme violence, quite often ending in death or serious injury.
Another inmate told me that during one of the worst paros he had seen, bodies were being carried out to the centre of the prison and left there for collection. Sometimes it was just body parts and not the complete corpse. By the end of that particular paro there were at least 26 people dead and many more injured.
The protests quickly attracted the attention of the press, who were notified by the prisoners’ committee of developments as they happened. People mounted all manner of protests. There were hunger strikes, where people sewed their mouths shut, and crucifixions with people actually being nailed to crosses. There were some extreme scenes, many of which were captured by the press. We would make large banners with messages of protest daubed across them. We would then hang them from the windows or walls of the prison in positions from which they could be seen from the road.
Food and water would start to become an issue after a few days as nothing was allowed to enter the prison. Buckets tied to a rope would be dropped down over the wall to enable some small amounts of food in. The worst would be when they cut the water off, as clean water would quickly run out and the whole place would begin to smell awful, the toilets couldn’t be flushed and no one could wash. The electricity would often be cut both during paros to try and make us back down, but also at normal times due to the bill not being paid.
I remember one occasion when the outstanding bill was over $100,000 and they actually discussed trying to charge us inmates for part of the cost! Human rights watch groups became involved with the UN in making a report on the situation. The government of Ecuador came in for a great deal of criticism internationally, at which point they began to pay attention. It wasn’t until the government of Rafael Correa was elected in November 2006 that any real changes began to happen. Those changes are still taking place ten years later.
The paros were nerve-racking but if not too serious they could sometimes be quite good fun; our group of friends would get together to have a party and not have to worry about the guards suddenly turning up. The worst part would be when the paro came to an end, which was usually when conditions in the prison became too dire with no food or water, and the police would come charging into the wing discharging their weapons and firing tear gas.
Everyone would dive into the nearest cell and lock the door from the inside and wait until the police came round, having regained control. This would be particularly scary as you never knew exactly how they were going to treat us. More often than not, we would all be forced to lie face down on the floor with our hands on our heads and the police would then walk around beating everyone with pieces of wood, batons or their guns, and kicking us. I witnessed them dragging people they had issues with into cells and water-boarding them, drowning them and discharging firearms next to their head, as well as severe beatings and strangulation. You would hear people screaming, crying and begging the police not to kill them. It was terrifying. When the police were walking down the line of us lying on the floor striking people with pieces of wood you would brace yourself for the impact as you waited for them to hit you.
The worst story I heard about the treatment of a prisoner was told to me by an English friend. The police had gone into Guayaquil prison to conduct a search and were being particularly heavy-handed. When they reached my friend’s wing they hauled out the boss of the wing, who was a notorious gang member, and dragged him down the stairs to the exercise yard while his wife and daughter watched. They started to beat him and then forced him to kneel on the ground. The police officer in charge said, ‘We have had enough of your bullshit. It ends here tonight. It’s over, you are finished.’ The guy was begging for his life, and his wife and six-year-old daughter were screaming and imploring them not to kill him. The officer took his handgun out and shot the man in the back of the head and twice more in the body. The wife and dau
ghter were in hysterics. A barbaric scene. The body was removed and that was that.
We were often terrified that after a severe problem in the prison, for example a gunfight, the police would come in and just execute us all, as had happened in some other countries in South America. To make it out of here alive I knew that I not only had to survive the gangs and all the violence, but also the police brutality and torture.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ESCAPE, PART 1
ANYONE WHO’S EVER been locked up will have spent a good deal of time thinking about how to escape. It is your natural instinct. In prison you tend to have two groups. There are those who would rather sit there and quietly do their time and get out when the given date arrives. The others would prefer to attempt escape and live with the consequences. It tends to be people serving longer sentences with little to lose who are more inclined to attempt escape. If you only have to spend six months behind bars, why risk being shot dead trying to escape?
If you are successful you have to go on the run, continually looking over your shoulder. If you’re recaptured you face the prospect of a lengthy sentence being added to your original one. If you have a life sentence or anything over ten years then it might be worth a go. This is particularly the case if you intend to leave the country in which you were imprisoned and not return any time soon. However, in that case, having escaped you’re then faced with a whole other set of problems. You need to get ID to travel. You need money, shelter, clothing, food and water. In order to acquire most of these you’ll need to interact with society (when you possibly don’t speak the language). This inevitably means running the gauntlet of security cameras that capture our images hundreds if not thousands of times a day. Communication becomes difficult as the authorities will be monitoring all forms of electronic contact. With facial and vocal recognition, biometrics and satellite tracking, it’s hard to run and hide virtually anywhere on the planet. Any contact with family or friends is almost impossible as this is the first place they will look for you. Yet, even taking all this into account, risking all for freedom can still be better than spending years rotting in a prison cell and trying to survive in a dangerous environment.
El Infierno Page 10