November 21, 2014 Ref.: Case No. 11.438 Herrera Espinoza et al. Ecuador Dear Mr. Secretary: I am pleased to write to you on behalf of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to submit to the jurisdiction of the Honorable Inter-American Court of Human Rights Case No. 11.438, Herrera Espinoza et al. in respect of the Republic of Ecuador (hereinafter “the State,” “the Ecuadorian State,” or “Ecuador”). The case involves the arbitrary deprivation of liberty and torture suffered to the detriment of Messrs. Jorge Eliécer Herrera Espinoza, Luis Alfonso Jaramillo González, Eusebio Domingo Revelles, and Emmanuel Cano during an investigation for the crime of international drug trafficking, as well as violations of the rights to due process and to a fair trial to the detriment of Mr. Eusebio Domingo Revelles in the framework of the criminal proceeding against him in which he was convicted on the basis of said investigation. The Commission considered that the pre-trial detentions to which the victims were subject took place in a legal framework that violated the American Convention. Likewise, the Commission established that the application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Eusebio Domingo Revelles did not constitute an effective judicial remedy since, among other reasons, it was heard by an administrative rather than a judicial authority. The Commission established that the victims were tortured while they were in the facilities of the National Police of Pichincha in order to get them to make self-incriminating statements, which were the basis for involving Mr. Eusebio Domingo Revelles in a criminal trial in which he was not guaranteed the right to defense or to information on consular assistance, since he was a Spanish national. The Commission noted that the judicial authorities also violated the principle of the presumption of innocence by validating the self-incriminating statements obtained from Mr. Eusebio Domingo Revelles under torture, without assessing or disproving on adequate grounds the evidence in favor of his innocence. This was done, among other reasons, because of the application of Article 116 of the Law on Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances, which established a “presumption of guilt provided it was justified by the corpus delicti. Lastly, the Commission determined that the State violated its international obligations by failing to exclude from the criminal proceeding the evidence obtained under torture and by failing to investigate thus far the torture to which all the victims were subject. The State of Ecuador ratified the American Convention on Human Rights on December 28, 1977, and accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court on July 24, 1984. Mr. Pablo Saavedra Alessandri, Secretary Inter-American Court of Human Rights P.O. Box 6906-1000 San José, Costa Rica Attachments