25 good faith, going with them to the migration department, where they verified his status as a resident of Ecuador. Then they asked him to go with them to INTERPOL’s offices to corroborate other matters, to which he agreed. After an hour the officers asked him to present everything he had with him. He had a briefcase with tools, the material he worked with, and gems. They made a list of all his things. Then they told him that he had to go to Guayaquil to render testimony, and that he would be back in a couple of hours. They put him on a plane. Afterwards, in Guayaquil, they took him to a barracks where there were several policemen, a public prosecutor, and a police colonel, Abraham Correa, and a police lieutenant. There he was interrogated about whether he knew a number of persons whose photographs they showed him. He only recognized one person who had offered him a business deal with leather jackets, which the witness never accepted. At the barracks he was never shown an arrest warrant, no attorney was present, and he was not informed of his right to hire one. Up to then he did not know why he had been detained. However, they made him sign a statement that he allegedly recognized one individual. He was only allowed to communicate with his wife on the fourth day after his detention. Then he was taken to the Penitenciaría del Litoral, where he was deprived of liberty for 843 days and nights. He was taken to that penitentiary without being informed of the reasons for this. During the time he was in prison he was never visited by any State-appointed attorney. In the course of the criminal investigation against him, he never received the arrest warrant nor was he notified of the charges against him, and he did not appear before a judge. When he arrived at the Penitenciaría del Litoral he was placed in a cellblock called the “quarantine,” a “horrible” place, where he remained 45 days. There were 250 to 300 inmates in the “quarantine,” some of them lying on the ground while others had certain privileges because they paid to sleep in “biombos” and had protection. The place was roughly 20 meters long by 10 meters wide. The prisoners were not allowed to go out to the lunchroom or to walk in the courtyard. The witness had to buy food from other prisoners. The air was “pestilential,” it smelled of feces, drugs and sweat of overcrowded people. Subsequently, he was transferred to the lower attenuated cellblock, where he remained ninety days in the corridors. He slept on a bench when there was room, or on the ground; then by force he was able to remain in a cell. He continued buying food, as the penitentiary kitchen was like a “garbage dump.” Beatrice provided him with the money to pay for the food. She visited him 72 times during his incarceration. She traveled from Quito to Guayaquil and from this city to Quito, sometimes by bus and other times by plane. She visited him while she was pregnant, and then she went with their daughter. In March he made a statement before a notary. After making it he was taken to the Director’s office. He was taken to an office where two armed men in civil dress came and told him that “if he wanted to get out he had to sign a statement in which he acknowledged that he was part of the ‘banda de los camarones’.” He refused. Afterwards they began to beat him, they handcuffed him, and they dragged him on the ground to another place in the same building. There they began to torture him, they tore his pants and burned him with cigarettes to force him to sign the statement. Since he continued to refuse, they beat him until he fainted. This happened six or seven times in the course of a month and a half. Once he received electric discharges on the testicles, and other times he was submerged in a pail of water as if to drown him. He felt panic and thought he was going to die. When he was burned with the cigarettes, he felt a pain that attacked his nerves. It was