Dr Carlos Figueroa, General Secretary of the Ecuadorian Medical Federation (a PSI affiliate), the Pachakutik Movement parliamentarian, Cléver Jiménez Cabrera and his advisor, Fernando Villavicencio Valencia, ex-leader of the oil workers’ trade union, were accused of libeling Ecuador’s President. The three had asked the public prosecutor to investigate the propriety of the President’s order for military intervention to ‘rescue’ him from the National Police Hospital in Quito during a political crisis in September 2010. The violent military action resulted in a number of deaths.
PSI affiliates in Ecuador have protested repeatedly against the Public Service Law, finally adopted on 6 October 2010, which drastically restricts freedom of association and collective bargaining for public service workers.
Figuerora has been sentenced to six months in prison and both Jiménez and Villavicencio to 18 months in prison. The offices and homes of both Jiménez and Villavicencio were raided on 26 December 2013. They were accused of hacking the president’s electronic mail, whereas in fact they have been investigating cases of government corruption. After an unsuccessful appeal, all three could be imprisoned any day now.