Court of Ecuador will decide this Friday whether to annul the arrest of former vice president Jorge Glas

The court deliberating the petition of the former vice president of Ecuador Jorge Glas what I know annul your detention carried out inside the Mexican Embassy in Quito after having received asylum and ordering the Ecuadorian State to return him to Mexico He will reveal his decision this Friday.

A source from the National Court of Justice (CNJ) confirmed that the hearing set up on Thursday was suspended at 04:15 in the morning this Friday so that the judges could deliberate.

Besides, He stated that the hearing will be reinstated at 3:00 p.m. this Friday and in it the judges' resolution will be known.

At the hearing, Andrés Villegas, Glas's lawyer, argued that The capture of Rafael Correa's former vice president was illegal by not complying with any regulated and arbitrary criteria because his human rights were violated by depriving him of the asylum that Mexico had granted him.

For this reason, the lawyer asked the CNJ chamber to evaluate the habeas corpus, that he be released again and handed over to the nearest diplomatic mission, after Mexico closed its Embassy in Quito after the police raid to arrest Glas or an embassy of another country that also undertakes to welcome you as an asylum seeker.

Villegas questioned that the police report on the arrest operation has been declared “secret” so that the details are not known and pointed out that “it is evident that there was no search warrant” against the Mexican Embassy and that Nor was the diplomatic mission previously consulted about the possibility of carrying out this procedure, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The lawyer insisted that the principle of inviolability of diplomatic missions was violated, “and personal property such as cell phones and even an electronic tablet of Jorge Glas was taken,” who declares himself to be “politically persecuted.”

In his speech at the hearing from jail, Glas indicated that he was allegedly beaten by the police who arrested him, that two of his fingers were dislocated and that he was taken out of the Embassy handcuffed and carried with his arms behind him, in “a position of torture.”

Glas also pointed out that the asylum granted by the Government of the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, is “a recognition” that he is “a politically persecuted person”, which he maintains to declare himself innocent in the face of the judicial processes and convictions in his against.

For her part, the judge of Penitentiary Guarantees of the CNJ, Melissa Muñoz, recalled that At the time Glas entered the Mexican Embassy he did not have an arrest warrant, which was later issued because he was accused of alleged embezzlement (embezzlement of public funds) in the case of the reconstruction of Manabí, the province most affected by the 2016 earthquake.

Likewise, he specified that Glas, who was Correa's vice president (2007-2017) and at the beginning of the Lenín Moreno Administration (2017-2021), had to return to prison to finish serving an eight-year sentence, the product of two convictions for bribery. and illicit association issued in previous years.

For her part, the Minister of the Interior and Government, Mónica Palencia, justified Glas's arrest on Thursday in the hearing by saying that for the Ecuadorian Executive there was never asylum for the former vice president, since the Diplomatic Asylum Convention maintains that it cannot be granted to anyone. is prosecuted for common crimes.

He also ruled out any persecution towards Glas, “who has been prosecuted since 2017, when (Daniel) Noboa was not yet president, and not for political crimes.”

Glas's arrest led Mexico to break relations with Ecuador and denounce him before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, considering that both its sovereignty and international law were violated.

EFE