‘He deserved to grow old and a dignified death,’ says the daughter of the accountant murdered in the Penitentiary

John Jairo slides his finger on the cell phone screen. There, look for one of the disturbing photos that portrayed the cruelty with which inmates of the Litoral Penitentiary massacred 62 people on November 12. He finds it and, when showing it, six victims are seen, collapsed on the floor of the transitional block F2. Among them was his father, John Campuzano, 56.

He identified him by the blue heater with white stripes he was wearing on the day of his arrest. On August 30, he was arrested for the investigation of “false information” that the Prosecutor’s Office is following in the Isspol case.

Campuzano was for thirteen years an accountant of Ecuagran SA, one of the companies investigated for an alleged Isspol scam and currently intervened by the Superintendency of Companies.

“(My father) did not falsify any document. (It is) because of his accounting that they find that (the irregularities), they involve him being an accountant for a company. An accountant! And what about the legal representatives? I can’t understand that ”, he asks. John Jairo, outraged that his father was given an arrest warrant. They did not grant him, he claims, measures outside the prison that they did grant to other defendants.

(My dad) did not forge any documents. (It is) because of his accounting that they find that (the irregularities), they involve him being an accountant for a company. An accountant! And the legal representatives? I can’t understand that

John Jairo Campuzano, son of the accountant murdered in prison

“The documentation presented does not ensure his appearance,” argued prosecutor Víctor González at the hearing to formulate charges, as detailed in the process. “The strange thing is that they all presented the same: social roots, work, medical certificate …, but nothing worked,” criticizes the last of his three children.

The family did not accept the court decision and appealed. However, the hearing was deferred three times: September 30, because – says his daughter Yomaira – the date was not set; the second, on October 12, due to “lack of information from the appeal court when the judge (Johann Marfetan) presented connection problems”; and in the third, on October 21, because the same judge excused himself.

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“He excused himself, because the wife was a relative of an Ecuagran manager,” says Yomaira and wonders why he did not present that justification earlier? If these delays had not existed, their children consider, perhaps they would have granted him freedom and today he would still be alive, enjoying the onions they had for breakfast as a family on weekends.

But it did not happen that way. His father died on November 12 and, four days later, they accepted the judge’s excuse, they separated him from the process, according to the court record, 26 days after the magistrate excused himself. “In one day they did what they did not want to do in 26 days,” Yomaira, who defends his father’s innocence, reproached.

José Morán, the former lawyer from Campuzano, pointed out –in the process– that “everything stated are assumptions, about an accountant (who) all he does is record what the senior (managers) of the company do”.

His son John Jairo questions that it was not until October 19 that the Prosecutor’s Office requested an audit of the accounting of his father, a native of Balzar and who was held for 73 days in the temporary ward F2.

In this block those investigated for financial crimes, alimony, among others, were detained. His family assures that he had to make a deposit in an account for his father to remain in that prison section, where he shared with other detainees who, according to what he told them, were “calm, supportive and took turns cleaning.” They even lent their father the coat he wore the day his life was taken from him.

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They were not allowed in – they criticize – clothing, cleaning supplies or medicine for their high cholesterol or for the knee pain that afflicted him several months ago.

John communicated with his family daily between 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.. Their conversations focused, says his son, on the details of the process and his concern about the detonations that he told them were heard almost daily.

Because of these conflicts, he told him, the food did not enter the pavilion. “Sometimes I would go days without eating or just eating one meal a day,” criticizes the young man, whose father previously worked in companies such as Cridesa, Pronaca and Cartonera Andina.

On November 12, before the massacre, John told them that he heard gunshots the night before and asked them to pray for him. He was positive, confident that he would be okay, his daughter recalls. But hours later, he was killed with a bullet impact near the abdomen and several stab wounds, one in the face and others in the chest.

It’s hard … it’s not fair that he died like this, he deserved to grow old, to have a dignified death. They (the State) had an obligation to save my dad’s life and they didn’t

Yomaira Campuzano, daughter of John Campuzano.

“It’s hard … it’s not fair that he died like this, he deserved to grow old, to have a dignified death. They (the State) had the obligation to save my father’s life and they did not do it, ”Yomaira claims, while holding a photo in which her father looks smiling. She considers him “honest, hardworking and sportsman.” He loved football and practiced it on weekends as a forward, from the youth training sessions of Emelec (1979-1982)

Now, his family says he will fight to clear John’s name. “I do not want that due to political pressure, because someone has to pay, my father’s name is stained,” insists his son, who together with his lawyer will file a lawsuit before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and, another, against the State, for “negligence” that was in jail. (I)