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Before the detention, the relationship between the alleged victim and her daughters
Sarah and Jeanne was good, normal, they lived together and were a family. Valerian
Edouard, Mr. Tibi’s son, spent some vacations with them in Ecuador, although
afterwards he returned to France because he missed his mother.
She was not informed when Daniel Tibi was detained, until Daniel himself called to
tell her that he was at the Cuartel Modelo in Guayaquil, that he did not know why,
and asked her to contact a lawyer for him to find out what was going on. She then
contacted an attorney in Guayaquil and they went to the Cuartel Modelo, where they
did not find him and they were told that he was not there. For this reason, they
went to other places in Guayaquil where he might be found, such as the penitentiary,
the military hospital, the police, but no one gave them information on Daniel Tibi.
The whole weekend passed without finding out anything about him. A few days later,
a woman called her and told her that Mr. Tibi was at the Penitenciaría del Litoral.
When Mr. Tibi was detained, she was three months pregnant, so she went to visit
him every weekend, and when she had school vacations. Sometimes she went by
plane and other times on the bus, depending on the financial resources she had at
the time. During the visits to the prison she met Eduardo Edison García León, who
said: “excuse me, Ma’m […], because I did not want to say [what] I said”. This was
the man who mentioned Mr. Tibi in his statement, linking him to the case, but he
himself explained that he did these because he was threatened.
The alleged victim’s detention conditions were extremely bad, difficult, humiliating
for the prisoners and for the visitors. There was a multitude around her asking her
for money “and for everything.” There was no security within the jail. Therefore,
when she went to visit she stayed in Daniel’s cell and only went out to the courtyard
sometimes, during visiting hours, so that her baby could get some air. During her
visits she saw much violence in the prison. One day when she had taken her
daughter Jeanne Camila, who at the time was six, there as a “fight with machetes.”
The girl saw the fight and would not return to the prison. She also began to suffer
nightmares and fear on the street. The worst area of the penitentiary was the socalled “quarantine,” where Mr. Tibi spent some time, which was a single room with
about two hundred people, and there were not enough beds for all of them. Prison
conditions were bad; there were no bathrooms, and medical assistance was not
adequate.
She took her daughter to the prison, when she was three weeks old, for Mr. Tibi to
meet her. She did so often. The alleged victim’s detention affected his relationship
with the daughters; the oldest girl had to stay in France those two and a half years
with her grandparents, because she had neither the time nor the spirit to care for
her well. Due to Mr. Tibi’s detention, she had to leave her daughters all this time.
The older one, Sarah, went from being a child to an adolescent, without her being
able to help her. She had a good relationship with her daughter Jeanne Camila,
since they were alone together and supported each other. What was difficult for
Jeanne Camilla was that almost every weekend she had to leave her with her
neighbor, while the witness went to Guayaquil. For two and a half years she did not
do anything special with her daughters, because whatever part of her salary was left
after paying the rent, electricity and food was spent on Mr. Tibi.
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