I asked how many foreigners there were on the wing and was told there were about ten or more. There were two Bulgarians, Canadians, a couple of Spaniards, a German and then a few Colombians, Chileans and Peruvians. I was surprised that none of them had come to introduce themselves. In Quito whenever somebody new arrived we would give them food, clothing, a bed, whatever they needed until they managed to get themselves sorted.
I decided that if they weren’t coming to me I would have to go to them. Chorito pointed the way to a couple of their cells and sent me on my way with a parting word of caution. Some of the foreigners were heavily into cocaine and Chorito warned me not to get too friendly with them as they were seen as junkies. I decided to follow his advice.
I went first to the cell of the Bulgarian he had said was a good guy. I knocked on the door and a voice enquired from behind the wood, ‘Who’s there?’
‘I’m a new guy on the wing and British. Could we have a chat?’
There was silence for a second, then, ‘Hold on a minute.’
I guessed perhaps he was putting something away he didn’t want me to see. A moment later the door opened and there was a tall, good-looking, clean-shaven, muscular guy of about my age. He didn’t invite me in, so we had a brief conversation in the doorway, in which he said he had to be careful as the gang would be watching me closely until I paid my dues and my being too friendly with him could cause him problems if I didn’t pay up. His name was Vasil. He reiterated what most people had already said: don’t get into debt, be very careful of the gang, don’t take drugs and stay healthy. I immediately warmed to him.
I left and walked across to the next cell and knocked on the door. It opened up after a short time to reveal four guys playing cards. I could smell alcohol and cigarettes and one or two of them looked wired, I guessed from taking cocaine. The cell belonged to a German whose name was Dieter. He welcomed me in with a big smile but the other three weren’t so friendly. One, a Spaniard, said hello, as did a somewhat nervous-looking guy who turned out to be the other Bulgarian, named Pico. The fourth guy was a Canadian called Karl. He was middle-aged, perhaps 45, and had a military look about him, with short black hair brushed to one side and the strong, wiry physique some men end up with after service. He wouldn’t look me in the face. He was fidgeting and twitchy and it made me feel decidedly uneasy. I didn’t know what was going on and put it down to the effects of cocaine.
I felt it best to leave them to it and bid them all good evening. I don’t smoke and the cigarette smoke from four people in a small room is quite overpowering. I left the room feeling generally unsettled by the reception I had received from all of the non-South Americans. They’d been very stand-offish all round and I realised that here there was not much unity between the foreigners – apart from the Colombians, who all stuck together as ever.
I spent the next few weeks settling into the new routine and customs of this prison. Every prison functions slightly differently, has an individual heartbeat and momentum. The trick as an inmate is learning how to adapt to that rhythm, fit in and then turn it to your advantage. I therefore sat back and watched the comings and goings while at the same time organising what I had to in the way of payments to Olea and the gang, or mafia as they preferred to be called. I was having to use the telephone daily to call my family and friends in Quito and Britain to arrange first the ingresso and then the buying of a cell. I was also trying to salvage what I could of all my belongings that had been left behind in the hurried transfer.
The embassy in Quito appeared to be as baffled as me by the move and wrote a formal letter of complaint to the Ministry of Justice, requesting that I be returned to Quito at the first opportunity. That letter was never even acknowledged, let alone replied to. On my departure from Quito the head guard had kept on telling me the embassy had requested my transfer, and yet they appeared to be completely unaware of it. The honorary vice consul Isabel had contacted the director of the prison in Quito several times, and the director had told the embassy that under no circumstances would I ever be transferred back there as I was a high security risk and had supposedly been in the midst of planning a massive escape of more than 16 people. That made more sense as there was a degree of truth in what he said. I had indeed been planning an escape and had made good progress on the tunnel down which we were going to disappear one fine night. I’m sure there were other elements that had contributed to the move, such as my owning four cells and controlling a large percentage of business on the wing.
Nizar had heard that I was suspicious of him having arranged the transfer and asked that I call him. During the conversation, he swore blind that he had not done a thing and that I was his friend and why not put him in charge of the sale of my cells and contents, totalling around $15,000 or $20,000. I declined the offer and thanked him for clearing the air. I had hurriedly placed Ruben in charge of selling them as he was British, and the embassy were in regular contact and could to some degree ensure he did what he was supposed to. Or at least I thought so. I also asked three other good friends, Mikey the Canadian, Sasha my Russian room-mate and Alejandro the shopkeeper, to watch what was going on and make sure things went smoothly. Ruben and I had had our differences but I thought he would help me out with all this
Apparently a few people had made moves to take over the cells, but Sasha and Mikey had fended them off. They had managed to bag up most of my clothes and personal possessions and handed them to the embassy. I wasn’t particularly worried about the material items; it was things like my letters and photos from family and friends, which were irreplaceable, that I really wanted.
I planned to use the money from the sale of the cells to pay Eva to see if she could finally get me released from this prolonged nightmare that seemed in some ways to be getting worse. I called her, and she told me that, as per our original plan, she had managed to arrange a deal with the judges in my case to reduce my sentence to six years. The cost was going to be $20,000 but none of it had to be paid up front. As long as I could show them the money was here in Ecuador in an account or cash, they would go ahead and reduce the sentence. I would then pay them once I was happy with everything. This sounded great. I already had $10,000 but needed the other $10,000 from the sale of the cells. This was my freedom we were talking about: surely Ruben wouldn’t get in the way of that.
Not having a phone was proving both difficult and costly. I wondered if I could pay the gang to be permitted to have my own. My father was very worried about my having been transferred to this notoriously violent gang-controlled prison, and daunted by the prospect of having to shell out a few thousand dollars again to sort me out down here with a cell and everything while my cells in Quito were ‘on the market’. I asked him to please cover the ingresso as that was the most pressing. I knew that once I had paid that promptly they would have faith and trust my word and I could buy myself time to get the money for the cell.
A couple of days later I presented Olea with the Western Union money transfer code. He was happy enough but now he had scented money he immediately enquired as to when I would be paying for a cell. He hadn’t actually shown me a fully equipped cell yet. He told me to follow him to a cell that would probably be OK if I wanted it. Halfway down the wing, which was the bottom half of a two-storey building, he opened the door to a cell on the right. This was his ‘office’, he told me. It had everything in it: a large fridge-freezer, 32-inch TV on a wall-mounted bracket, a reasonable-looking mattress. It was also designed for one person to live in so, as he had previously explained, I could live on my own. When could the money be arranged, he asked again. This guy was persistent. I tried to explain the situation without giving too much away. We parted company, me feeling very much under pressure again. I now knew I was totally committed to buying this cell and that it needed to be asap.
I started spending time with the Bulgarian, Vasil. We would exercise together in the morning and evening with home-made weights – bars with concrete cast on to each end. I couldn’t keep much in
the cell I was living in because it would almost certainly go missing, so Vasil offered to look after anything I wanted kept safe. He told me of some of his experiences of massive gun battles between the police and the gangs, murders and all manner of torture. I was to some extent accustomed to such stories, but this was a whole new level of madness.
I would return to Chorito’s cell to sleep but it was difficult with people knocking on the door 24/7. Chorito kept a rucksack full of drugs in the cell that you could smell from outside the room, it was that pungent. There was certainly nowhere to hide it. I thought, what do we do if the police come in to conduct a search? We are going to be in some serious shit if that happens. I didn’t much fancy another sentence on top of the 12 years I already had, particularly not for something that wasn’t mine. It was quite normal here for everyone who lived in a cell where contraband was found to be sentenced.
Chorito had by now grown to trust me and would send me on errands delivering large packages of polvo to the dealers on other wings. I would also help him with the selling in the evenings, sometimes to the wing upstairs, where a lot of foreigners and wealthy prisoners lived.
Los Cubanos’ key bodyguards were mostly experienced contract killers on the street or ex-military, and nearly all of them had firearms training. They were frequently sentenced to 25 years without parole for murders, so didn’t care at all about killing again. In the event of a murder, sometimes multiple murders, quite often it would have been sanctioned by the gang, so the guards were aware it was about to happen and would have been paid off in advance to turn a blind eye. If not, they would certainly be paid afterwards, with the added threat of their families and themselves being brutally slain should they decide to talk. One of the gang’s favourite ploys was staging a suicide.
Olea wasn’t in the gang’s top tier, which was made up of three brothers, but as one of the main bosses he would usually be accompanied by ten to 20 gang members of his choosing from our wing. He would never leave the wing unless his group was with him. Even on the wing he would almost always be accompanied by three or four of the gang, all armed with guns and knives. At any minute intense violence could erupt without warning. I started to become attuned to the tension in the place; it was a feeling of anticipation that something awful was about to happen. And it was.
Every wing had spotters on the roof, one on each corner, again armed with handguns. It was their job to keep a close lookout for any members or groups of the opposing gang encroaching from the other half of the prison. The two gangs would exchange shots across the no man’s land that separated the two halves of the prison on an almost daily basis. I think this was to some extent out of boredom rather than anything else.
The spotters also kept an eye out for the police in case they mounted a surprise search of the place. The gang prohibited anyone other than their members from going up there. It was also extremely dangerous because the police had the right to shoot you as it was viewed as attempted escape. I would quite often hear warning shots being discharged over the heads of people who had strayed too near the edge.
Not long before I arrived a prominent member of the gang had been shot dead on the roof by the police. This had sparked a 16-hour gun battle and siege, inmates against the police. I had seen the reports on the national news. Every single wing had chained shut the entrance gates and barricaded them with whatever they had to hand. They had then opened fire down the long passageway that ran the length of the prison. They unleashed everything they had. The battle only stopped when there was no more ammunition to be fired. The police dropped tear gas bombs from helicopters above the prison. Miraculously, no one was killed although several were injured. Vasil told me that when the police finally came in, he and his friend were petrified that they were just going to summarily execute everyone to make a point. They didn’t, but they beat and tortured nearly everyone.
Because of their relationship with the guards, the gang members were also allowed off the wing they lived on when we were otherwise supposed to be locked in. The gates would officially be opened up just after the first count, which took place between 7.30am and 8.00am every day apart from Sunday, when it was 9.00am. You then had to be back on your wing at 5.00pm for the final count, after which they locked the wing but the cells were left open all night. We were of course supposed to be locked up in our cells but the gang had put in place an arrangement with the guards and director so that we were left alone. This applied to all the wings in the prison.
On the whole I saw very little of the guards. All they did, basically, was the count in the morning and the evening. They wouldn’t intervene to break up a fight as it was just too dangerous for them. In fact, it was not unusual for them to assist the gang beating people and even go so far as killing them. I viewed them on the whole as other members of the gang, just with keys and uniforms.
There was no one to turn to for help in the event of a problem. If you complained to your embassy they would only call the director of the prison, who was being paid by the gang, and he would notify them that you were causing problems and tell them to silence you. However, sometimes trouble comes looking for you.
CHAPTER TWENTY
EXODUS
IN JANUARY 2007, when I had been in prison for nearly eighteen months, Ecuador’s newly elected president, Rafael Correa, took office. In his election campaign, he had promised to introduce various prison and law reforms in an attempt to sort out a system that had essentially come to a standstill.
The prison system had been placed in a state of emergency, thus giving the president executive powers. He reintroduced automatic release on bail if not sentenced within one year of arrest; the reintroduction of two for one, which basically meant you were released automatically after having served half of your sentence; and the reactivation of the pre-libertad system, which was akin to early release on parole – this could be applied for after having served two fifths of the total sentence.
The most important change for us foreigners was the introduction of the badly needed indulto, or presidential pardon, which was one of the very first things Correa did having gained power. The indulto would apply to anyone, foreign or national, who was captured with two kilograms and under of any drug, be it heroin, cocaine, cannabis or ecstasy. It would mean immediate release for those to whom it was applicable. Many foreigners would benefit from this and everyone was eagerly waiting to see if they might be able to go free much sooner than they had anticipated.
For the indulto to apply you had to be sentenced and the sentence had to be confirmed and executed. You couldn’t be making any sort of appeal or awaiting repatriation. You had to have served ten per cent of the sentence and be a first time offender. The indulto only ran for one month and if you missed the time limit that was it. The lawyers were having a field day processing applications, charging anything from $200–$1,500 to complete the paperwork and file the application in the court. There was some flexibility with conditions such as the weight limit, as long as there were a few banknotes to back your word up. An example would be if the police had weighed the drugs in the packaging or wrappers. I saw a few cases where people had drugs weighing a total of 2,200 grams but still managed to get the indulto by saying the extra weight over the two kilograms was due to the packaging – and of course paying the judge.
I discussed with Eva the possibility of my being released on the indulto. In my case there were no drugs weighed as they were impregnated in the groundsheet of the tent. The police had weighed the whole tent instead of extracting the drugs, which I had wanted to do myself. If I had extracted the drugs and not listened to Eva then I would have gone free with the indulto after only two years as I knew there was less than two kilograms of cocaine within the rubber. But by this point the tent had been destroyed so it was no longer possible. I felt sick knowing that I was legally eligible to go free but couldn’t. I had to sit and watch as hundreds and hundreds of people walked through the prison gates to freedom. There was nothing we could do. That decision no
t to extract the cocaine was to cost me so very, very dearly.
In total some 2,300 people, half of whom were foreign nationals, were released as a direct result of the 2007 indulto. Many of my friends were released. Some of the lucky ones had only been in prison a little over six months but fitted the criteria, so went free. There was a fantastic sense of optimism throughout the prison population. Nearly everyone felt as if they stood a good chance of going free. As far as the other laws went, towards the end of 2007 thousands of inmates were suddenly released within a month or so. Along with the 2,300 who went free with the indulto there were probably over 5,000 more who went free under other laws that came into force at the same time. This was almost half the prison population going free.
I finally moved into my cell on Atenuado Abajo in the Peni at the end of 2007. Nearly every afternoon ten to 15 people would be collected from nearly every wing, taken to reception and released. We went from having some 150 people on the wing down to 65 or fewer. It was quite eerie, as if I had been forgotten. Overall the prison went from 8,000-plus inmates down to under 3,000 in a matter of months. At the end of this mass exodus the eight cells to the left of mine and five to the right were completely empty. I didn’t have neighbours for three months! The wing, which was usually quite busy with people wandering around, was now completely dead and almost silent. I would stand there with the song ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials running through my head.
I was walking down the long central corridor that ran the full length of the enormous prison connecting all the cells when I suddenly heard someone call my name. I turned to meet eyes with the face of none other than Tigre, with whom I had nearly had the serious fight with shortly after arriving on C wing.
‘Hola Pieter. Remember me?’ he asked grinning.
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