This new system functioned on the basis of merits for work, good conduct, education, sports and various other areas. You would be graded for each and it all added up to the recommended percentage you would be given remission. The maximum was 50 per cent. This was a problem for people like me who had already been in prison for years, when the system didn’t exist and nor did any courses or work opportunities to be graded on. It just didn’t work and so I received only ten per cent remission, meaning I had to do another five years: a total of 11 years out of 12. Practically the whole sentence. They were barely giving me anything. This had really unnerved Simon when he heard my result as his was due back any day. To him the prospect of another five years in prison was just too much.
Added to this, Simon was in trouble. Big trouble. He had been doing business with various people, including Los Cubanos gang, trafficking cocaine to various parts of Europe. The problem was, he couldn’t cover the losses if something went wrong. He was also juggling money; using money from one deal to finance another hoping they would both come off, but they didn’t. He had lost money one way or another, through either the drugs or cash being robbed. It’s very hard to control the situation when you are locked up in prison thousands of miles from the action. If someone decides to take your money, what are you going to do, unless you have people overseeing everything for you on the outside, which Simon didn’t. He ended up in debt to the tune of some $120,000 to the gang and another $80,000 to someone else. That’s $200,000! He couldn’t get anyone to do any more business so he was stuck. He just couldn’t get the money. The gang had been sending people up to him on a regular basis now to put pressure on.
He had become depressed and despondent. He had even told the embassy he was in grave danger and feeling suicidal and that they needed to move him. They didn’t seem to believe him, or couldn’t arrange it, I don’t know which. I remember sitting with him in his cell one day. He pointed to an iron ring in the ceiling of the cell and said if he was going to kill himself, that’s how he would do it. I told him to shut up and stop talking crap.
After the count that morning, I went back to my cell and fell asleep. At about 9.30am there was a banging on the door. I opened it, bleary eyed. ‘Come quick, come quick! Something’s wrong with Simon.’ I ran to his cell where his cellmate and another Englishman, Jake, were busy removing the air conditioner from the gap above the door to gain access to the cell. His cellmate had managed to get the air conditioner nearly all the way out when he started shouting that Simon was hanging in the cell. My heart started racing. ‘Come on! Get this fucking door open!’ I screamed. We took the air conditioner out and the cellmate went through the gap into the cell, dropped down and opened the door.
We charged in and grabbed Simon’s legs to take the weight off the noose. Jake got a chair, climbed up and managed to loosen the noose and remove it from his neck. We dropped him down on to his bed, where one of the other inmates trained in first aid tried to revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massages. But he was gone.
By now there was a huge crowd gathering at the door, all pushing to get a view. We cleared them back and someone called the guards. We decided it was best not to disturb the scene too much. Jake and I were discussing what had happened – things weren’t right. The first thing we noticed was that all the chairs were neatly lined up against the walls, so what had he stood on? There was nothing. The noose was not a proper noose, merely a knot tied twice, and his head was touching the ceiling. So how had the noose tightened? There was no rope for it to have slid down. We reckoned that someone had knocked him out and then held him up while someone else tied the knot around his neck and attached him to the iron ring. Something else really puzzled me – I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t have waited a week or two more to see if there was the possibility of his getting released and out of the potentially deadly fix he was in. Having wanted nine years surely a few more weeks wouldn’t have bothered him?
When the guards arrived, one of them, who was friendly with Simon, went ballistic saying there was no way he had killed himself and that someone had done this. He was furious. The police were called and the forensics arrived a couple of hours later. They suspected murder; they took the names of a few people and later conducted interviews and more or less accused one person outright. Nothing came of the investigation, which they eventually gave up on. I believe Simon was killed by the gang because he hadn’t paid off his debt. I had learned that the gang had given him up until the day in question – that Monday – to pay or they were going to kill him.
Isabel from the embassy was shaken when she found out, as she had known Simon for the entire nine years and liked him a lot. She had to inform Simon’s ex-wife and his two daughters back in Britain. It was another rock in my heart, another heavy link added to the chain. I had spent a lot of time with Simon and he had become one of my closest friends there. I felt very lonely for a while after. At this point the British embassy really started trying to push for all of us to be repatriated as quickly as possible.
I had refused, because it meant my family having to pay $8,000 in fines imposed by the judge. I wasn’t about to ask them to cover this, after having caused them so much trouble. I was still adamant that some change would occur in the law, or a presidential pardon might be issued. There were constant rumours circulating the prison, half of which I think were made up just to give the inmates some sense of hope; some light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
Repatriation was a long, complicated, drawn-out process that at its very quickest would take a year and a half to be arranged. You first had to send a letter to the minister of justice for Ecuador asking his permission to even be able to apply for repatriation. Once you got the green light, a dossier about you was prepared by the prison services and sent to Quito where formal approval had to be granted, which could take over a year to happen. When you got approval to be repatriated to your home country the minister of justice for Ecuador would send the dossier to the equivalent department in your country, such as the Foreign Office in the UK or the State Department in America. They would then review your case and decide whether or not they were willing to accept you back in order to serve the remainder of your sentence.
The calculation of how much you needed to serve in prison once home varied significantly from country to country. For example, in Spain most people who were repatriated went free after a month or so in prison there. The English system was kind of unfair as they calculated how long you were to serve by working out how long you had left of the total sentence, so, for example, say I had served six years out of 12, six would be left. They then took the six and said you had to serve half of that, so another three. This meant I would serve a total of nine years out of the 12. This I thought a very unfair system because had I been sentenced to 12 years in England under the current laws I would only serve half and be automatically released, which would mean six years instead of nine. Not only that, but it was very likely that you would have just come from a prison with a far harsher regime and suffered a great deal more.
I know a lot of people would say tough shit, you shouldn’t have done it in the first place, and that’s fair enough. But just spare a thought for people in prison abroad – it could one day be you or your child or a family member. People are quite frequently wrongly imprisoned in foreign countries for all manner of reasons.
We were still being told that everyone in the prisons in Ecuador would be released after having served half their sentence in something known as a ‘two-for-one’ deal. So, seeing as I had served at this point six years – half my sentence – I couldn’t see any reason to go back to Britain and have to do another three; that would make a total of nine when I could possibly be out very soon here.
There were various conditions you had to meet in order to be repatriated. You had to be sentenced and the sentence needed to be enforced and finalised with no ongoing appeals or further charges pending. You had to have served at least ten per cent of your senten
ce. Your home government had the right to refuse you if they didn’t particularly want you back in the country. If however they approved you and the prison service in your country did too, then your application was once again returned to the Ecuadorians for final approval. The Ecuadorians would then give their approval if they were happy with the amount of prison time you were going to serve once home. You also had to pay the fine imposed by the judge along with the sentence and this I did not want to do. I was stuck.
In my case, the embassy told me they could make an application direct to the president, asking that the fine be waived so that I could be repatriated. They warned me that it might take a year or two for a reply to come back. I told them to go ahead and make the application for the fine of $8,000 to be waived. I would wait and see if I got lucky.
If I applied to be repatriated then I couldn’t apply for the two-for-one as well and see which happened quicker. It was a case of either/or. I didn’t like the idea of missing out on the chance of being released after six years and instead having to serve another three or so years in prison in England. It was a very difficult decision to make. Added to all this there was the distinct possibility that if I was repatriated I could face the prospect of being re-sentenced in Britain to 20-plus years in prison. That really put me off and was a key factor in me deciding to try to wait it out, as painful as it was in deepest darkest Ecuador.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
TRASLADO – TRANSFER
IT WAS 1 December 2013. I was still really ill with TB having now been sick for well over two years.
‘Onze, onze, onze!’ came the shout just after the count. Fuck! A couple of people came running into the cell to tell me hundreds of police were descending on the prison. We could hear a helicopter overhead and see high-ranking police officers appearing on the rooftops surrounded by heavily armed police. Something major was happening and it wasn’t good. Quickly word came that this looked like the beginning of the end. The dreaded transfers to the new regional prison. During his presidential campaign, Correa had vowed to completely reform the prison system. Now he was carrying through this promise and we were about to experience first-hand his vision for our futures. But many inmates were not too happy about it.
Everyone was running around like headless chickens trying to hide weapons and drugs, both of which the wing was awash with. Our wing, having become independent from Los Cubanos, was now one of the major entry points for drugs and firearms because it was outside of the gangs’ control and therefore every Tom, Dick and Pablo could bring in exactly what he wanted. This was largely due to our recently installed prison director, who was the most corrupt I had seen in my entire time in Ecuador. He had made it very clear that if we wished to operate in ‘his’ prison there was absolutely no problem. The one condition was that he receive his piece of pie – and a big piece it was.
Intent on milking an over-fatted calf that was due to be slaughtered any moment, shortly after his arrival, he sent out an emissary in the form of his personal security guards. They travelled from wing to wing carrying a list of the key players in the drug trade from each wing. They invited all those named on the list to come and meet the director in his office in order to discuss how he wanted things to run. Basically, this was to sort out the fee he was going to demand.
Upon their return from this summit meeting the main dealers from the wing spoke to me to offer me the sole right to sell crack cocaine and cocaine to the entire wing with two or three people working under me, promising me security and backup from them if needed. The director had demanded $2,000 a week as a kind of licence fee to trade drugs, firearms, alcohol and whatever else. We debated how we could raise this kind of sum weekly, based on the average amounts we sold daily. It was possible but it was going to be hard work and take a huge chunk of the profits. This, however, was the only way in which we were going to be able to continue trading. If we refused to cooperate and ceased doing business altogether, he had threatened us with sanctions such as being transferred. So we were really between a hard place and la Roca!
The government had been threatening to carry this out for months now and we knew that the transfers to the new prison were imminent. However, we had discovered that a certain number of wings in better structural condition were to be left standing and occupied after some basic improvement, mainly to the security. The director decided he would offer guaranteed places in these wings, for a large fee, which was to be negotiated. He was trying to squeeze people for as much as he thought he could on an individual basis.
The authorities, all the way to the very top, were absolutely determined to wrest back control of the prisons and break the power of the gangs through divide and conquer. President Correa was pushing through the reforms as fast as he could as the prisons of Ecuador were becoming renowned worldwide as dangerous, violent, out-of-control, gang-run, drug-infested hellholes you would be lucky to survive if imprisoned in them. The murder rate in the prisons was spiralling out of control as the system broke down. At least while the gangs had controlled the prison they had maintained a strict level of discipline and order. Numerous foreigners had been murdered and this was becoming more frequent, which the various embassies were becoming alarmed about; this was really beginning to cause the president problems, as the embassies were complaining and threatening sanctions if their citizens were not properly looked after.
More and more police poured into the place. Various dealers arrived at my cell in a panic, asking me to stash drugs for them in one of my large, purpose-built hiding places. Most of these were by now compromised so I was reluctant to place myself – and their goods – in jeopardy. For those with whom I was more friendly, I accepted the items and placed them in some new spots that absolutely no one knew about, just to be sure. By now the entire wing was in turmoil.
Several thousand police, military, naval and air force personnel had descended en masse, marking the beginning of a huge operation to put an end to the mayhem. The jefe de guia called everyone to gather round as he was about to start reading out the list of people to be transferred. He explained that we were not permitted to take anything with us, absolutely nothing – no documents, photos, letters, clothes, money, NADA! This announcement was a body blow as we had received no prior warning. This would have allowed us time for friends and family to come into the prison and remove any valuable items for safe keeping. I wasn’t particularly worried about losing material possessions such as my TV, fridge or DVD player, as they are easily replaced. I called Margarita to let her know what was happening and she said she would inform Isabel, the honorary vice consul, and try to salvage some of my belongings.
By now quite a few friends had gathered in my cell waiting to hear the jefe de guia call out the list of names. We sat around chatting and reminiscing. I gathered together a bag of medicines I needed with me, in the hope that they couldn’t deny me my medication. My friends and I decided to consume what we had left of the various drugs in stock, coke and weed. I gave my Spanish room-mate Marco a quantity of bags of heroin in order to help him withdraw gradually once he reached the new regional prison.
I had rapidly packed a bag just in case I could chance it and get it through. As I had expected, it didn’t take long for my name to come up. There were enough people wanting to take over my end of the business and I knew they had been plotting against me. I wasn’t allowed to take anything and I went through a series of searches before being sent out into the exercise yard to await transfer. This was going to be quite an experience.
I sat in the shade and watched as slowly but surely every last person filtered through the door. It took a while for over 350 people to be searched and accounted for, by which time the sun was at its zenith and beating down fiercely on us. We had no food or water and people were beginning to suffer. The police called some of the shopkeepers forward. Their stock was all going to be wasted now, so they agreed to all the drinks being distributed. The police, however, in their usual disorderly fashion, just piled them all into la
rge plastic bins and threw the bins one at a time into the yard. This provoked a mad scramble ending with people piling on top of one another like a rugby scrum, desperate for a drink. A bin landed just to my left and as I was reaching to get a drink, twenty or so people piled on top of me, knocking me to the ground.
I was completely crushed and nearly passed out as I couldn’t breathe. I was still ill from the TB, with no strength. Both my elbows were badly cut in the fall and my friends, seeing that I was really struggling to breathe, persuaded the police to let me back into the wing for an injection of dexamethasone, which my good friend Carlos offered to administer. When I re-entered my cell to find the medication and a needle, I discovered that the cell had been completely ransacked by people looking for the drugs and money stashed there. Diego, my other Spanish room-mate, later told us what had happened. As soon as both Marco and I had been taken out of the wing, a group of inmates, along with two guards, had charged into the cell, hit Diego a couple of times and held a knife to his throat to get him to tell them where everything was hidden. He had no idea, so it proved fruitless, but they had totally trashed the cell. Everything was in disarray. I immediately recovered the drugs from the secret hiding place and put them in my underwear, thinking it unlikely that I would be searched again before we reached the new prison.
After Carlos administered the injection, my breathing normalised and I lay down on a mattress in the cool and fell asleep. At one point a kindly policeman woke me and offered me some food that they had been pilfering from the shops. It was appreciated as I hadn’t eaten anything all day. I ate it, and went back to sleep again. The next I knew I was being awoken by Marco; it was dark and people were milling about in the wing. I was confused. He filled me in on what had happened.
El Infierno Page 21