Jorge Glas, former vice president of Ecuador during the presidential term of Rafael Correa, whom the Police detained last Friday when attacking the Mexican Embassy where he had just received asylum from the Mexican Government, started a hunger strike in prison, as confirmed this Wednesday by his lawyer Sonia Vera.
In a message on social networks, Vera indicated that the legal team leading Glas's defense “finally” he was able to make contact with the former vice president, who is being held in La Roca, Ecuador's maximum security prison, located in the city of Guayaquil.
On Monday, Glas was emergency hospitalized after an apparent decompensation that, according to a police report to which the defense had access, could have been caused by a medication overdose, while prison authorities attributed it to his refusal to eat food.
Asylum did not give me freedom, but it gave me the dignity of being a politically persecuted person.
In a fragment of a video conference with Glas shared by the lawyer, the former vice president narrates that The police officers who arrested him allegedly beat him and that this prevented him from standing while his rights were read, which according to the detainee is filmed by the security cameras of the Mexican Embassy.
Vera pointed out that Glas thanked the Government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for granting him asylum.
“Asylum did not give me freedom, but it gave me the dignity of being a politically persecuted person,” said Glas, according to the quote published by the lawyer.
Glas was at the Mexican Embassy in Quito since December 17, 2023, where he had entered as a guest and later requested asylum after declaring himself a politically persecuted person and victim of 'lawfare' (use of the judicial apparatus against political adversaries), which the Ecuadorian Government emphatically rejects.
The former vice president, who held the position during the presidential term of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) and also at the beginning of the administration of Lenín Moreno (2017-2021), had an arrest warrant for his return to prison, as he was accused of alleged crime of embezzlement (embezzlement of public funds) in the case of reconstruction after the 2016 earthquake.
The Justice had also ruled that he had to return to prison to finish serving an eight-year prison sentence for two convictions for bribery and illicit association, the last of them in the framework of the Odebrecht case, of which he had already served nearly five years. between 2017 and 2022.
The invasion of the Ecuadorian Police to the Mexican Embassy led the López Obrador Government to break diplomatic relations with Ecuador and to file a complaint against the International Court of Justice in The Hague, considering its sovereignty and international law violated.
The forced entry into the diplomatic headquarters was also strongly condemned this Wednesday by the Council of the Organization of American States (OAS), as well as by the international community.
Ecuador was the only country to vote against the OAS resolution, considering that Mexico violated the Diplomatic Asylum Convention by granting asylum to a person prosecuted for common crimes, which it considers to be interference in internal affairs.
EFE
#vice #president #Jorge #Glas #hunger #strike #prison #reveals #lawyer