Quito. The detained former vice president of Ecuador, Jorge Glas, was transferred to the Militan hospital in Guayaquil due to an overdose of ingested medications, according to opinion leader Aurelio Dávila on his X social network account.
Previously, a lawyer for Glas had demanded in a letter to prison officials that his defense team and family be allowed access to the politician, saying Monday that they had not been able to contact him since his arrest.
Glas, already convicted twice of corruption and now facing new charges, was arrested on Friday after a raid by Ecuadorian police on the Mexican embassy in Quito, where he had remained since December.
The unusual incursion brought a dispute between the two countries to the boiling point, prompting Mexico to suspend diplomatic relations with Ecuador and drawing criticism from countries in the region and around the world.
Ecuador has defended the entry into the Mexican embassy, arguing that the North American country could not grant diplomatic asylum to Glas because he faces charges and that Ecuador had information about an imminent escape plan.
In an open letter to the administrators of the La Roca prison in Guayaquil, dated Sunday, Glas’ lawyer, Sonia Vera, expressed her “deep concern and alarm due to the total impossibility of establishing communication with our client for more than 48 hours.” , stating that it was “a severe infringement of Jorge Glas’s fundamental rights.”
Glas’ safety and well-being could be in danger, Vera added in the letter, requesting unlimited personal contact for Glas with his attorneys.
Glas was thrown to the ground and hit in several parts of his body during the raid, Vera explained at a press conference on Monday.
The SNAI prison agency told Reuters that for security reasons it will not comment on the letter for now.
The leftist Glas, vice president between 2013 and 2017, was sentenced for the first time to six years in prison for accepting bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in exchange for state contracts.
He was convicted again in 2020 for using money from contractors to finance campaigns of former President Rafael Correa’s political movement and sentenced to eight years in prison.
Glas, who served more than four years in prison before being released in 2022, has long alleged that the charges are politically motivated, an allegation prosecutors have denied.
He now faces charges of allegedly embezzling funds raised to help rebuild the coastal province of Manabí after the devastating 2016 earthquake.
President Daniel Noboa did not directly refer to the dispute with Mexico at an event on youth employment.
“The government also has a utopia that must be a reality and it is an Ecuador without impunity, that every convicted criminal serves his sentence in prison, whatever the cost,” said Noboa.
Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena said Monday that the head of Ecuador’s diplomatic mission in her country will not be asked to leave, and emphasized that Mexico wants to calm tensions.
“We want to call for calm, we are not going to apply the same recipe, the abuse that they did to us,” Bárcena said at the morning press conference of the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
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– 2024-04-12 23:28:13
