(Reuters) – Mexico abruptly suspended bilateral relations with Ecuador in a growing diplomatic dispute, after Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest a former vice president accused of corruption.
WHY DID ECUADOR ENTER THE MEXICO EMBASSY?
Heavily armed, balaclava-clad police stormed the Mexican embassy late Friday night to arrest Jorge Glas, Ecuador's leftist former vice president, wanted on corruption charges.
Glas has lived in the embassy since December, after requesting asylum in the North American country, which Mexico did not grant him until Friday.
Ecuador, which requested permission from Mexico to enter the embassy in early March to detain Glas, maintains that the asylum offer was illegal because under international law, accused people should not be granted asylum.
Mexico, whose President Andrés Manuel López Obrador immediately suspended relations with Ecuador after the raid, has said it closely studied the Glas case.
The arrest capped a week of rising tensions between the two Latin American countries, after Quito declared Mexico's ambassador persona non grata, citing “unfortunate” comments by leftist López Obrador.
The Mexican president had compared election-related violence in the two countries, claiming that the assassination of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio last year was unfairly linked to the leftist candidate in the race, who subsequently lost. López Obrador also blamed what he said was a corrupt media for what he described as electoral manipulation.
The media has been a frequent target of López Obrador's ire during his nearly six years in office.
WHO IS JORGE GLAS AND WHAT CHARGES DOES HE FACE?
Glas, who was vice president during Rafael Correa's government between 2013 and 2017, has been convicted twice in corruption cases and now faces new charges for misappropriation of public resources.
He was first sentenced to six years at the end of 2017, after a court found him guilty of accepting bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in exchange for delivering firm state contracts drowned by the scandal.
Glas, 54, was convicted again in 2020 of using contractor money to finance campaigns for Correa's political movement and received an eight-year sentence.
Correa – who has lived in Belgium since leaving office – was convicted in the same case.
Both men have long alleged that the charges are politically motivated, an allegation prosecutors have denied.
Glas served more than four years in prison before being released in 2022, only to be imprisoned again the same year, after a court ruled that he needed to serve the remainder of his sentences, although his lawyers had requested that he serve them simultaneously and will benefit from conditional release. .
He was last released in November 2022, but Glas faces new charges of embezzling funds raised to help rebuild the coastal province of Manabí after a devastating earthquake in 2016.
In December, his lawyers appealed a judge's decision to send him back to prison, arguing that his life could be in danger, but the decision was denied.
WHAT HAS THE REGIONAL REACTION BEEN?
On Saturday, governments across Latin America's political spectrum – including Brazil and Colombia on the left, and Argentina and Uruguay on the right – sharply criticized Glas' arrest.
Brazil's government condemned Ecuador's move as a “clear violation” of international norms prohibiting such an attack on a foreign embassy, while Argentina called for compliance with the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.
WHATS NEXT?
The Mexican Foreign Ministry said it will file a complaint with the United Nations International Court of Justice, while the government of leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro said it will seek human rights protections for Glas before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, alleging that his right The right to asylum was “barbarically violated.”
The Washington-based Organization of American States said a session of the body's permanent council will be convened to discuss the need for strict compliance with international treaties.
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