28 At the time of his detention, his property included the gems (which were almost all of what they seized), the land that he had bought, which was worth US$80,000 (eighty thousand United States dollars) and the bank accounts with US$300,000 (three hundred thousand United States dollars). While he was in prison, his former spouse had to work. He also received help from his family, who sent him money, but when this was not enough he began to sell everything they had, to pay for the trips, the expenses and the attorneys. Before moving to Ecuador, he spent ten years outside France. After his release, he returned to this country, where he feels that he is undergoing a second punishment. He did not want to live there. He left France because he wanted to live in another country, life there was not for him, and when he returned he found a country that he did not know, he was unable to work and was in very poor conditions physically. For his family, this also meant the end of a dream, as they were happy living in Ecuador and they returned to a country that they did not know and did not like. When he arrived in France he underwent facial surgery, they operated on his face, the malar, the nose, and also a disk hernia; he had holes in the abdominal walls, a crushed vertebra. He had aged about twenty years. Now he cannot make any physical efforts, and he needs to undergo another operation. He suffered hepatitis. The physicians have told that this was surely a consequence of the conditions of his detention. He also has stomach cancer. Justice has not been done in his case. For him, justice entails not detaining a person the way they detained him, that is, based only on a police report that mentions his name in two lines without having corroborated anything, destroying families, lives, without anyone worrying about the damage done. His honor in Ecuador and France has suffered, because up to now there has been no official information that his case was dismissed, and therefore, he has not been found innocent. For this reason many people think, to date, that he is guilty. The “moral damage” that he suffered must be redressed through public acknowledgment of what happened, by means of an official acknowledgment in the printed media and on television, stating that his rights were violated and that he was detained in an arbitrary manner; the judgment finding him innocent and that he never participated in criminal activities must also be published. He also wants the State to acknowledge its incompetence in applying the country’s laws, and that there was a major injustice in his case; to acknowledge that things must change to improve treatment of unsentenced detainees, that the State must accept its responsibility for everything that happened to him, and must take steps to avoid recidivism of these actions. b) Testimony of Beatrice Baruet, who was the alleged victim’s spouse She currently lives in France; she met Mr. Tibi in Ecuador in 1992 and she was his common-law spouse for seven years. When she met him he was a pleasant, happy and generous person. She fell in love with him because he was very charitable. During the time they lived together in Ecuador, their plans were to remain in that country. He had a job as a professor at the French secondary school, where she earned approximately US$2,000 (two thousand United States dollars) a month, and Mr. Tibi had an emerald and painting business.