Arbitrary, detention of Jorge Glas: court; does not order his release

Quito. After almost 13 hours of hearing, the Court, made up of judges Liz Barrera, Adrián Rojas and Mónica Heredia, declared that the right to personal freedom of Jorge Glas was violated, as it was an “illegal” and “arbitrary” detention when kidnapped him from the Mexican embassy on Friday, April 5.

In that sense, that Court stated that it would be appropriate to order “his immediate release,” but, considering that he has other prison orders, in two criminal proceedings, he will continue in the prison called La Roca, in the city of Guayaquil. And he did not mention the political asylum status that Glas already enjoyed at the time of his violent arrest. That is, since April 4.

Thus, the former vice president of Ecuador, after unifying the two sentences for the cases called “Odebrecht” and “Bribery” (eight years in prison) has served a total of five years and 15 days and the remaining time he has to serve is two years, 11 months and 15 days.

And as the authorities of Daniel Noboa’s government have stated, Glas will not have discounts for good behavior or other benefits that all detainees have. The representatives of the prison center indicated that he was not granted pre-release because he received a grade lower than three out of 10.

Glas previously said that this note was the result of a persecution because they did not want him to leave prison. In fact, during his imprisonment he completed two master’s degrees and maintained exemplary behavior, according to the evaluations of the directors of the two prisons where he spent those five years.

The jurists who address the issue consider that the Court’s declaration verifies the crime and gives rise to criminal actions against those who ordered and carried out the assault on the Mexican embassy. And since the authorities of the government, the Police and the Armed Forces have recognized that the order came directly from President Noboa, a trial could begin with criminal consequences or, in a long process, in international courts.

The other option is that a decision of the International Court, where the Mexican government filed the action, provides for resuming the state prior to the assault and thus requests that Glas be given safe conduct so that he can leave Ecuador.

On the other hand, the Minister of Labor, Ivonne Núñez, denounced, in her personal capacity, the former president of the Republic Rafael Correa for the crime of treason. In the lawsuit, she included YouTube links, where statements by the former president are collected, after the violent entry of the Ecuadorian police into the Mexican embassy in Quito.

According to Núñez, Correa generated panic with his statements and instilled discouragement. Given this, Núñez requested that Correa’s X and Facebook accounts be suspended.

On Tuesday, April 9, on his social networks, Correa indicated that President Daniel Noboa’s communications team was preparing an “intensive, even scheduled” campaign to accuse him of being a traitor to the country. “The audacity and audacity of these people is incredible. “To be prepared,” he mentioned.

For Núñez, “the demonstrations about a war, inciting and implying the closure of the Port of Guayaquil, promoting any way for Mexico to repress Ecuador, and other expressions of the denounced, must be excluded from the protection of the right to freedom of expression, and punished as what they are, crimes against public order.”

The response from Correa’s lawyers has been that none of the sections of article 353 of the Penal Code indicate that crimes of that magnitude can be charged for expressions or comments.

The member states of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) strongly condemn the events that occurred in the early hours of today, April 5, at the headquarters of the diplomatic mission of the States United Mexicans in the city of Quito by the security agencies of the government of Ecuador.

ALBA-TCP supports Mexico

The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-People’s Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) condemned the aggression of the Daniel Noboa regime against the Mexican embassy in Quito and expressed its total solidarity with the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“These completely discretionary and illegal actions constitute a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the Convention on the Right of Asylum and the sovereignty of Mexico, which must be rejected by the civilized countries of the entire world,” it is emphasized in the notice.

They also repudiate the kidnapping of former Vice President Jorge Glas, “legally protected in the Mexican embassy through the right to political asylum, and the mistreatment of all Mexican diplomatic personnel, constitute serious and unprecedented violations of International Law.”