Former vice president indicted on corruption charges
Arrested immediately after being granted asylum
On the 6th (local time), Ecuadorian police escorted former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glass, who was indicted on corruption charges, to La Roca prison in Guayaquil. On the 5th, when former Vice President Glass, who had been sheltering at the Mexican embassy in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, was granted political asylum, Ecuadorian police special forces forcibly entered the Mexican embassy and arrested former Vice President Glass. [사진 = AFP연합]
The Ecuadorian government faced a crisis of ‘diplomatic isolation’ in Central and South America as it forcibly entered the Mexican embassy in the country to arrest a former vice president accused of corruption.
According to the Associated Press and Reuters on the 6th (local time), Mexico and Nicaragua declared severance of diplomatic relations with Ecuador, and major Latin American countries also condemned Ecuador’s forced entry into the Mexican embassy.
On the night of the 5th, the day before the declaration of severance of diplomatic relations, Ecuadorian police broke down the entrance to the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador in the capital Quito, forcibly entered the country, and arrested former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glass, who had been seeking political asylum since December of last year.
According to the Ecuadorian Times, a local media outlet, the forced entry of Ecuadorian police commandos took place just hours after the Mexican government approved former Vice President Glass’s political asylum.
Jorge Glass, former Vice President of Ecuador [사진 = 로이터 연합뉴스]
Former Vice President Glass served as vice president from May 2013 to the end of 2017 under the left-leaning Rafael Correa and Lenin Moreno administrations. He was implicated in a large-scale corruption scandal that occurred in South America in late 2017 and was sentenced to six years in prison for receiving approximately $13.5 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht during the bidding process for a government contract.
Afterwards, in April 2020, former Vice President Glass, along with former President Correa and 17 former officials, were separately sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of bribery and corruption of approximately $8 million from 2012 to 2016 in the name of election campaign funds from private companies that participated in public bidding. was sentenced to
Former Vice President Glass was temporarily released in November 2022, but after right-wing Ecuadorian President Daniel Novoa took office in the same month, an arrest warrant was issued in late 2023 on charges of embezzlement of reconstruction funds from the 2016 Manabi Province earthquake, and he was detained in Mexico. He took refuge in the embassy and applied for political asylum.
Accordingly, in March of this year, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested the Mexican government to cooperate in the arrest of former Vice President Glass after entering the embassy, but the Mexican government refused.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador [사진 = 로이터 연합뉴스]
On the 6th, after the forced entry, left-leaning Mexican President López Obrador said on social media, “Ecuadorian police forcibly entered our embassy and detained the country’s former vice president who was seeking asylum due to persecution,” adding, “This is in violation of international law and Mexico.” “It is a clear violation of sovereignty,” he condemned. Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena also posted on social media that day, “Considering the clear violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the injuries suffered by Mexican diplomats in Ecuador in the process, Mexico declares an immediate severance of diplomatic relations with Ecuador.” .
On this day, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has ruled with an iron fist for 20 years, also raised the level of criticism, calling the Ecuadorian government’s actions “an act of neo-fascist political barbarism.” Other Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, and Cuba, also condemned Ecuador’s forced entry into the Mexican embassy.
According to the Vienna Convention signed in 1961, government agents of the host country cannot enter diplomatic facilities such as embassies without the consent of the head of the diplomatic facility. In the international community, there are few cases like Ecuador where the government of a host country forcibly invaded diplomatic facilities of another country stationed in its country. In Central and South America, there have been no cases of trespassing into an embassy since 1981, when Cuba raided the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested dissidents.
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2024-04-07 21:33:37
