“Gato’s head snapped back… We could make out the shots of several 9mms, a couple of 38s and one or two 45s. I hurled myself through the doorway and into the room. I didn’t look back.”

Caught in an Ecuador hotel room with 8kg of cocaine, Pieter Tritton was no mule or dupe. He had planned and organised everything. The consequence: a 12-year sentence inside one of the world’s deadliest prison systems, where gun fights, executions and riots are a part of everyday life. As a Brit banged up abroad, Pieter had to learn how to survive – and fast – because one wrong move would mean death.

This is the insider account of what it’s like to live in a place worse than hell and come out a changed man on the other side.