Man who spent nine years locked in one of world's deadliest prisons shares ‘worst thing’ about it

A man who spent nine years of his life in some of the world's deadliest prisons for drug trafficking described the worst things about his time behind bars there.

Pieter Tritton had been caught trafficking drugs around the UK before, including being arrested for dealing during his school days, which got him kicked out, and said that 'dealing drugs is almost more addictive than taking them'.

He told LADbible that he got arrested again in the UK when he was caught in a van on his delivery route, for which he was sentenced to five years behind bars.

Getting back into smuggling cocaine upon his release, Pieter got into smuggling cocaine stashed in tents, but his operation was rumbled and he was arrested in Ecuador in September 2005.

He would spend the next nine years and two months of his life in prison, first in Quito and then in Guayaquil, in deadly conditions he described in graphic detail.

Pieter Tritton spent nine years in prison in Ecuador (YouTube/LADbible Stories)

Pieter said that behind bars, the prisons could erupt into 'sudden, unpredictable violence'.

"You'd be walking around, having a nice day, quiet day, there were restaurants and there's shops, you could have your visitors coming into the wing, into the cell," he said.

"You know, not like an English prison, it was very much different. It was like a small town contained within walls. And then suddenly, you know, someone will get shot in front of you in the sun.

"They'd be on the floor dead, brains all over the place, guts hanging out, blood, and it's the smell of the blood, I'll never forget, that is one of the worst things, that metallic-y taste in your mouth, so much blood."

He said he'd seen people 'electrocuted, hacked to death, blown up, people shot in the face, shot in the head, decapitated' and generally killed 'every which way you can imagine'.

Along with the smell and taste of blood, the other worst thing he found about his nine years in prison was knowing he could die at any moment.

He said: "One of the worst things about the entire experience of being in prison in Ecuador was not knowing whether today I was gonna die.

"Every single day for over nine years, you were thinking, 'Will I be alive tomorrow morning? Is this my last day on this planet?' I don't know, 'cause I really don't know."

He said the closest he came to death was when another gang ended up in the prison, the Choneros, and another gang called the Cubanos sent a hit squad round to the wing of the prison Pieter was kept in to eliminate some of their numbers.

Pieter had described seeing assault rifles and C4 in the hands of the imprisoned gangs, and when he asked why they didn't just blow a hole in the wall and escape, he was told 'we're too busy fighting the other gang to escape'.

Things kicked off when a bullet was fired over Pieter's shoulder and hit the man standing right next to him in the face, and then 'a full-on attempt at killing the whole lot' ensued.

He explained that afterwards, 'the embassy just started freaking out' and his family paid a fine he'd been given during his sentencing, saying that getting back into a British prison was 'like a holiday camp' as he didn't have to worry about being shot.