The defense lawyers of the former Ecuadorian vice president, Jorge Glas, have filed a 'habeas corpus' petition to obtain his release from the maximum security prison of La Roca, in Guayaquil, where he was transferred after his arrest inside the Mexican embassy in Quito. The raid by Ecuador's security forces on Mexico's diplomatic headquarters caused the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries, as well as unanimous condemnation from the majority of the international community.
Glas, an ally of former president Rafael Correa (in government from 2007 to 2017) and a refugee in the Mexican embassy in Quito since December 2023, is currently accused of embezzlement of public funds as part of an investigation into the reconstruction of the coastal province of Manabí, the most affected in the serious earthquake of 2016.
OAS emergency meeting tomorrow
At the request of Ecuador, the Organization of American States (OAS) has called a meeting for tomorrow to discuss the recent raid by Ecuadorian security forces on the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas. The raid led to the severing of diplomatic relations by Mexico, which had granted political asylum to Glas in December and planned to take him out of the Ecuadorian capital this weekend.
The extraordinary meeting of the OAS, which will take place at 3pm local time in Washington (9pm Italian time), will have on the agenda the "Rules on diplomatic relations and asylum".
Ecuador was thus ahead of the OAS president himself, Luis Almagro, who on Saturday announced that he wanted to ask for a meeting of the Permanent Council to discuss the issue, after having criticized the episode and "any act that violates or puts at risk " the inviolability enjoyed by diplomatic representations. Almagro had also expressed his "solidarity with those who were victims of the inappropriate actions that targeted the Mexican embassy in Ecuador".
Unanimous condemnation of Glas' arrest
The High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, condemned the "violation" of the Mexican embassy in Quito and made "an appeal for respect for international diplomatic law". And from the United Nations to the United States, from Europe to Latin America, there is unanimous condemnation of Ecuador's raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito for the arrest of the former
Ecuadorian vice president, Jorge Glas.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, through his spokesperson, made it known that he was "alarmed" by the raid, underlining the importance of the inviolability of embassies.
Governments across Latin America's political spectrum - including Brazil and Colombia on the left, Argentina and Uruguay on the right - criticized the raid. The Brazilian government defined Ecuador's move as a "clear violation of the American Convention on Asylum and the Vienna Convention, which establishes that the premises of a diplomatic mission are inviolable", adding that what happened "constitutes a serious precedent" .
Javier Milei's executive recalled, among other things, that Argentina recently granted asylum status in its embassy in Caracas "to six Venezuelan political leaders and is awaiting the release of the relevant pass".
The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, from his profile while US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller encouraged "the two countries to resolve their disputes according to international norms".
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