
‘Outrage against international law’: Ecuador police storm Mexican embassy to arrest former VP
CNN
The Ecuadorian Police arrested former Vice President Jorge Glas from the Mexican Embassy in Quito on Friday night, according to a statement on X from the government of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa on X.
Ecuadorian police stormed the Mexican embassy in Quito on Friday night to arrest a former vice president seeking asylum there, in an escalation of tensions that Mexico decried as “an outrage against international law.” Mexico’s foreign minister said the country would break off diplomatic relations with Ecuador after the arrest of former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas. The rift between the two Latin American countries had been growing since Mexico’s decision to grant political asylum to Glas, Ecuador’s former vice president under leftist ex-President Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017. Convicted twice on corruption charges, Glas says he is the subject of political persecution and had been sheltering inside the embassy. But on Friday, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on his official X account, said he had been informed that “police from Ecuador forcibly entered” the Mexican embassy and took Glas – who “was a refugee and processing asylum because of the persecution and harassment he faces.” A statement released by Ecuador’s government on X also confirmed the arrest. Glas was “sentenced to imprisonment by the Ecuadorian justice system,” the statement from Ecuador’s government read, and was “arrested tonight and placed under the orders of the competent authorities.” He had been granted diplomatic asylum “contrary to the conventional legal framework,” the government said.