9. Mr. Vélez Loor maintains that the other detainees in La Palma were deported by boat to Colombia, and that he was left alone with an injured back. On December 18, 2002, Mr. Vélez Loor was transferred by land to La Joyita prison, cellblock 6, in Panama City where he was to stay for six months until June 1, 2003. After another hunger strike he was sent to maximum security block 12 where he was to endure both physical and psychological torture until September 10, 2003, at which time he was deported to Ecuador. 10. Mr. Vélez has stated in his complaint that he was not allowed to communicate with either his family or with the Ecuadorian Embassy. He further asserts that it was only thanks to a telephone, kept illegally in the prison, that he was able to get in touch with the Consulate and ask them to inform his family that he had been arrested. 11. The petitioner alleges that in La Joyita Prison, in February 2003, in poor health as the result of the terrible beatings he had endured at La Palma, he once again asked to be treated by a doctor —however, this request was denied. Mr. Vélez Loor maintains that he was also suffering from an ulcer and that the doctor who was treating him, whose name was José Aníbal Rodríguez Torres, prescribed for him some out-of-date medicine that made him vomit and that produced intoxication. In March 2003 he fainted and was taken to Santo Tomás hospital and there doctors informed him that he would have to pay USD $ 300 for the check-ups but since he had no money, he would be left to die. 12. The petitioner alleges that on Sunday June 1, 2003 the victim began another hunger strike, begged for medical attention and sewed his mouth shut. As a reply, a police officer went to see him and told him that death would soon follow. He was transferred to the highsecurity punishment block, designed for extremely dangerous prisoners. He was flung into a damp and dark cell and told that they were going to unzip his lips with the benefit of gas and truncheon. Then they stripped him naked, threw him to the ground, and started beating him with a club on his back, his legs, and his feet. Meanwhile they scraped his scalp with their boots. He claims that while he was face downward, they lifted up his head and poured tear gas in his face and eyes; he could not breathe and he had to force open the stitches in his mouth in order to be able to breathe. He felt suffocated and unstitched his mouth and this produced bleeding. They hit him on the soles of his feet while twisting the tendons of his legs. After this lengthy torture, he recounts that Lieutenant P. locked him up, still naked, in a small cell known as “the discotheque” in block 12 of La Joyita, where they used the “rotura blanca” ("clean break" method) which would not leave any traces. There they poured tear gas powder on his body and around the cell; the prisoners who have undergone this punishment refer to this dust as anthrax on account of the terrible suffocation that it produces. Then a member of the guard proposed that he submit to oral sex if he wanted to buy his way out of the Discotheque. The petitioner said that he refused this offer and, as a result, the guard took out white powder from his bag and threw it on his back, smeared it on a pencil and inserted it into his rectum. According to the petition, this burnt like fire and turned his whole body bright red. 13. Mr. Vélez Loor alleges that after a few hours they took him out of the Discotheque and put him into a dark, cold, and damp cell where four extremely dangerous prisoners were being kept. But nobody asked him anything as he was at death's door with his mouth half stitched up. He lay down on a piece of newspaper and ran a high fever. After 17 days of the hunger strike, he started drinking a cup of tea every morning but he maintains that his health was shattered. On July 27, 2003 a fellow prisoner paid some money so that a guard could arrange a medical appointment for him and it was during this consultation that the doctor detected an ulcer. The report on his situation was sent to the Ecuadorian Embassy in Panama. 14. Mr. Vélez Loor adds that despite the gravity of his condition and the lack of specialized medical care, the doctors sent misleading reports to the Ecuadorian Embassy in which they stated that they were in fact treating him. During the period of his detention, he had no access to a lawyer, was not aware of the charges that were being brought against him, and he had no knowledge of the judicial authority that had ordered his detention. 3