An appeals court in Ecuador on Friday rejected the appeal of habeas corpus that requested the immediate release of Jorge Glas, former vice president under Rafael Correa, and revoked the original ruling that considered his detention at the Mexican Embassy in Quito, where he had received asylum from the Mexican government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, illegal and arbitrary.
The Specialized Administrative Litigation Chamber of the National Court of Justice affirmed that Glas’s arrest, which occurred on April 5 during a police raid on the Mexican diplomatic headquarters, was “legal, legitimate and not arbitrary,” according to the lawyers of the former vice president.
The court of first instance, when reviewing the appeal presented on behalf of Glas, had initially determined that the detention was illegal and arbitrary due to the lack of respect for the protocol for raids on foreign diplomatic delegations in Ecuador. However, he kept the former vice president in prison because he had to serve an eight-year sentence for bribery and illicit association in corruption cases.
The ruling accepted the government’s arguments, which maintained that the entry without permission into the Mexican Embassy in Quito sought to prevent the escape of a defendant with a current arrest warrant.
He habeas corpus, Promoted by lawyer Francisco Hidalgo, it asked the Ecuadorian justice system to release Glas and hand him over to Mexico or a third country willing to respect the asylum granted by the Mexican Executive.
Jorge Glas, who rejects the charges against him and declares himself politically persecuted, entered the Mexican diplomatic headquarters on December 17, 2023 to request asylum, when the Prosecutor’s Office was about to prosecute him for alleged misappropriation of public funds in the works of reconstruction after the 2016 earthquake.
The Mexican government granted asylum to the former official of the previous government of Rafael Correa in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with Ecuador, whose president Daniel Noboa expelled ambassador Raquel Serur after Mexican President López Obrador linked the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio with the electoral victory of the businessman.
After his capture, Glas was transferred to La Roca, Ecuador’s maximum security prison, which is part of the Guayaquil prison complex. Since June 1, the prison complex has suspended food service due to problems with the supplier company.
The new ruling issued on Friday ordered the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty to guarantee and protect Glas’s rights. “Especially the right to life, health and integrity, in consideration of the current prison context,” he demanded.
Rafael Correa: the ruling is “nonsense”
Jorge Glas, who also has German citizenship, was a key figure in the government of Rafael Correa (2007-2017), serving as vice president between 2013 and 2017, as well as during the first months of Lenín Moreno’s presidential term (2017). -2021), until the investigations against him began.
“Between rooster and midnight they report this nonsense. “Will there still be any moral reservations in the country?” Correa said upon learning of the ruling.
The former president criticized that they justified the legality of the detention “in that there is a state of exception and the inviolability of the home (embassy!) does not apply and that they have to base themselves on national law and not international law.”
“They never notified the composition of the appeals court, they never announced knowledge. They did not even deign to mention who they presented the amicus curiaelamented the former president.
Between the amicus curiae Those who supported the appeal in favor of Glas were the Puebla Group, the Lawfare Observatory, the Argentine jurist Eugenio Zaffaroni and the former Bolivian ambassador to the UN, Sacha Llorenti.
Article 27 of the 1969 Vienna Convention says that provisions of domestic law cannot be invoked as justification for violating a treaty. And in this case it is a decree. It’s amazing that they get judges to sign those things. They have no career, no prestige,… https://t.co/jvMOhVlQCp
— Rafael Correa (@MashiRafael) June 8, 2024
Keep reading:
• Israel announces the rescue of four hostages in a military operation in central Gaza
• “To be born in Gaza today is to be born dead,” denounces the organization Save the Children
• The US asks Israel for “transparency” regarding the attack on a school in Gaza