(Reuters) – Mexico abruptly suspended bilateral ties with Ecuador in an escalating diplomatic dispute after Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest a former vice president on bribery charges.
WHY WAS ECUADOR PART OF THE MEXICO EMBASSY?
Heavily armed police in balaclavas stormed the Mexican embassy late Friday to arrest Jorge Glas, the left-wing former vice president of Ecuador who is wanted on bribery charges.
Glas has been living at the embassy since December after seeking asylum in the North American country, which Mexico only granted on Friday.
Ecuador, which asked Mexico for permission to enter the embassy to detain Glas in early March, argues that the offer of asylum was illegal because under international law people facing charges should not be granted asylum.
Mexico, whose President Andrés Manuel López Obrador immediately suspended ties with Ecuador after the raid, said it had closely examined 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 Lopez Obrador.
Mexico’s president compared election-related violence in the two countries, saying the killing of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio last year was unfairly linked to a leftist candidate in the race who later lost. López Obrador also blamed corrupt media for what he called election manipulation.
The media have been a frequent target of López Obrador’s ire during his nearly six years in power.
WHO IS JORGE GLAZ AND WHAT CHARGES DOES HE FACE?
Glas, who served as vice president under Rafael Correa’s government between 2013 and 2017, has been twice convicted in corruption cases and now faces new charges of misuse of public resources.
He was first sentenced to six years in prison at the end of 2017 after a court found him guilty of accepting a bribe from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in exchange for the transfer of government contracts to the controversial firm.
Glass, 54, was convicted again in 2020 of using contractors’ money to finance the campaigns of Correa’s political movement and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Correa, who has lived in Belgium since leaving office, was convicted in the same case.
Both men have long said the charges are politically motivated, a charge prosecutors have rejected.
Glass served more than four years in prison before being released in 2022, but was jailed again that year after a court ruled he needed to serve the remainder of his sentence, even though his lawyers had asked that he serve them At the same time, he became eligible for parole. .
He was last released in November 2022, but Glass faces new charges of misusing funds raised to rebuild the coastal province of Manabi after the devastating 2016 earthquake.
In December, his lawyers appealed a judge’s decision to send him back to prison, arguing his life could be in danger, but the appeal was rejected.
WHAT IS THE REACTION IN THE REGION?
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.
The Brazilian government condemned Ecuador’s actions as a “clear violation” of international norms prohibiting such a raid on a foreign embassy, while Argentina called for compliance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said it would file a complaint with the International Court of Justice, and the government of leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro said it would seek protection of Glas’ human rights from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, saying his right to asylum had been “barbarously violated.”
The Organization of American States, headquartered in Washington, said a meeting of the organization’s permanent council would be convened to discuss the need for strict adherence to international treaties.