The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, has flatly rejected the condition posed by the Mexican Government to reestablish diplomatic relations: that is, handing over to Mexican officials former vice president Jorge Glas, currently imprisoned in a maximum security prison in Guayaquil. “We seek a fluid and peaceful dialogue with Mexico, without intervention from one side or the other,” Noboa stated in an interview with France Presse held in Paris, where he stopped during his tour of Europe. “We have wanted to strengthen relations with Mexico, but it does not seem appropriate to me personally or to the Government that the only condition and the only way to re-establish a relationship with Mexico is to give them a criminal,” the president continued.
Noboa stressed that Glas, who was number two in the Executive during the period of former President Rafael Correa, has been tried in national courts for corruption crimes. To evade a third sentence, which he considers political persecution, the politician took refuge in the Mexican Embassy in Quito, but the Ecuadorian police forcibly removed him from there on April 5 and imprisoned him. The matter has caused a deep crisis. “The person who tried to seek asylum and subsequently take him to Mexico is a person who has been convicted of two crimes,” continued the Ecuadorian president, reminding the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador that the asylum seeker “was someone who had been given alternative measures.” so that he has house arrest.” “He went to hide in an embassy, it is the equivalent of someone being in prison, escaping and from there going to take refuge in an embassy. “It’s that simple,” said Noboa.
Jorge Glas was serving a pre-release regime when he entered the embassy in mid-December 2023, to request refuge and avoid a judicial process being investigated by the Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office for a case of improper use of public funds that were intended for the reconstruction of the areas affected by an earthquake that occurred in April 2016. Glas is being held in La Roca prison in Guayaquil, although a judge recognized that his capture at the diplomatic legation was illegal. But he did not grant him freedom, because he alleged that the former vice president has sentences to serve and an arrest warrant for the latest case being carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office.
“If there are convicted criminals, we are not going to allow justice to be flouted in this way either,” said Noboa, although he added, to temper the situation, that he is willing to dialogue as long as no conditions are set. The Ecuadorian president took advantage of his visit to Europe to ask for assistance in the fight against organized crime. Also for that purpose he mentioned Mexico again. “I think it would be better if we once again have diplomatic relations with Mexico for the fight against drug trafficking, since one of the groups that operate in Ecuador belongs to a Mexican cartel,” Noboa said.
For the president of Ecuador, the diplomatic crisis with the North American country will be clarified in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which will resolve “if the embassy itself was denatured,” Noboa mentioned. The ICJ held two hearings where it heard versions of what happened between both countries. “We trust that we will be right,” insists the Ecuadorian president. “The moment a criminal is granted asylum, things begin to involve intervention in national affairs, especially in national justice, and we do not agree,” he concluded.
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