This Saturday, intellectuals, artists and politicians from several countries released a letter in which they ask for the immediate release of the former vice president.
The invasion of Mexican territory had as its objective the kidnapping of Glas, who had been persecuted judicially and politically for seven years and had been granted asylum in that diplomatic headquarters, states the letter, which has the support of more than 150 signatures.
Among those who support this message are former presidents Alberto Fernández, of Argentina; Ernesto Samper, from Colombia; Evo Morales, from Bolivia; Rafael Correa, from Ecuador; José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, from Spain.
They were joined by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Cuban troubadour Silvio Rodríguez, the executive secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP), Jorge Arreaza, among other personalities from Ecuador, the United States , Spain, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Paraguay and Cuba.
“We demand the immediate return to the situation prior to the assault against the Mexican embassy, restoring Jorge Glas’ political asylum status,” they claim in the text, where they ask that the former Ecuadorian official be granted the corresponding safe conduct to travel. “safe and sound” to Mexican territory.
On April 5, members of the National Police broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito and forcibly took Glas, an intervention condemned by the international community and which caused the rupture of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Not even the military dictatorships dared to perpetrate an aggression of this type, which, in this case, was instructed by the highest authority of the State, the letter stated, in which they added that Glas was a victim of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. .
On April 12, a court at the National Court of Justice determined that his detention was “illegal and arbitrary,” but they still decided that he should remain behind bars because he has an eight-year sentence pending.
Given what happened, Mexico accused Ecuador before the ICJ, a body that last week heard considerations from both parties.
In its defense statement before the ICJ, the Ecuadorian government tried to justify its violent entry into the embassy with the argument that it was an exceptional case and that the political asylum granted to Glas is illicit, since he has convictions for common crimes.
However, Mexico considers him persecuted and assures that Daniel Noboa’s government violated the article of the Vienna Convention on the inviolability of diplomatic headquarters.
Constitutional lawyer Jorge Sosa said that Ecuador’s defense before the ICJ dusted off old arguments from the last century that were already rejected in 1951 by the same Court.
The South American nation, for its part, also filed a lawsuit against Mexico at the ICJ last week in which it defends its entry without consultation into the embassy in Quito to arrest Glas, who is facing convictions for alleged acts of corruption.
A few days ago, the Lawfare Observatory published a report in which it highlights the role of some media and political sectors with the financing of United States government institutions to initiate judicial proceedings against leaders uncomfortable with their ideologies.
Among the cases mentioned is Bribery, which was born in Ecuador in 2019, addresses alleged irregularities by the government of Rafael Correa with the construction company Odebrecht and led to the accusation of officials, including the former president himself and his then vice president Glas.
ode/avr
