The former vice president of Ecuador Jorge Glas was hospitalized on Monday, April 8, after being taken to a maximum security prison in Guayaquil, following his arrest at the Mexican embassy in Quito. The vice president in the Government of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) is in a stable condition, according to prison authorities. In parallel, President Daniel Noboa admitted that the diplomatic situation with Mexico is “complex.”
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The detained former vice president of Ecuador Jorge Glas was transferred to a hospital on Monday, April 8, after falling ill in a Guayaquil prison, prison authorities reported, a few hours after his lawyers complained that they had not been able to contact him.
In a statement published on platform X, the national penitentiary service (SNAI) said that Glas had been transferred to the naval hospital in Guayaquil. The organization specified that the former vice president fell ill “after refusing to eat the food provided during the last 24 hours,” but he is in a stable condition.
The SNAI version contradicts another, supported by two local media, according to which Jorge Glas tried to commit suicide. According to the radio station Radio Pichincha, which cites sources close to the Correista Citizen Revolution movement, to which Jorge Glas belongs, the politician had been taken to the hospital due to an overdose of medication in a suicide attempt; while the digital media Primicias spoke of a “self-induced deep coma caused by the ingestion of anxiolytic, antidepressant and sedative medications.”
Glas was hospitalized after one of his lawyers, Sonia Vera, published an open letter in which she expressed her “deep concern and alarm” over the fact that the detainee had not been able to speak with his legal team, adding that this meant ” a serious violation of the fundamental rights” of the former vice president.
Former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), of which Jorge Glas was vice president (2013-2017), commented in his account X about the transfer of his ally to the hospital: “It was what I feared. The scoundrels will jump for joy. Strength, Jorge!”
Glas will remain under observation and will return to prison after being discharged, the SNAI said.
Convicted of corruption cases, Glas faces new charges
The hospitalization of the former Ecuadorian vice president comes four days after his arrest, following a police intervention at the Mexican embassy in Quito, where he had taken refuge since December.
Glas was sentenced for the first time to six years in prison for having received bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in exchange for contracts with the State.
He was sentenced again in 2020 to an eight-year prison sentence for using money from contractors to finance campaigns of Correa's political movement.
The politician, who served more than four years in prison before being released in 2022, has always denounced that the charges against him are politically motivated.
He now faces charges of embezzlement linked to the reconstruction of the coastal province of Manabí, in the west of the country, after the 2016 earthquake.
He had taken refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito, requesting political asylum, which was granted to him by the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on April 5.
Noboa admits that the diplomatic situation with Mexico is “complex”
The precedent of the dispute between the two countries took place last week. On Thursday, April 4, Ecuador asked the Mexican ambassador in Quito, Raquel Serur Smeke, to leave the country by declaring her “persona non grata”, following criticism from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador about the last Ecuadorian elections in which the candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
A day later, the granting of asylum to Glas and the Ecuadorian police intervention in the Mexican embassy deepened the crisis. The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, broke diplomatic relations with Ecuador and ordered the return to the country of all the staff of his embassy in Quito.
The irruption of the Ecuadorian Police into the diplomatic headquarters aimed to arrest former vice president Jorge Glaswho according to Mexico was staying as a guest in that place.
Ecuador assured that it proceeded after exhausting dialogue with the Mexican Government to arrest the politician, convicted by the Justice of his country in corruption cases. Quitó also argued that there was “a real risk of flight.”
However, this Monday, April 8, the Mexican Foreign Minister, Alicia Bárcena, stressed that the procedure was unjustifiable, since Quito violated international law by retaining a person who had political asylum.
This same Monday, the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, described the crisis as a “complex and unprecedented situation.” Noboa assured that he had to make “exceptional decisions to protect national security, the rule of law and the dignity of a people that rejects any type of impunity for criminals, delinquents or narco-terrorists.”
In a letter that he published on his social networks, the president of Ecuador stated that he was “willing to resolve any difference” with Mexico, but reiterated that “justice is not negotiated.”
Meanwhile, the international community has already mobilized.
The Organization of American States (OAS) confirmed that it has called two emergency meetings for next week, in order to address the serious diplomatic crisis between the two Latin American nations.
The meetings respond to the request made by Ecuador to discuss this matter in the plenary session of the inter-American organization, on Tuesday, April 9, and to another call in that regard from Colombia and Bolivia. These last two requested another meeting for next Wednesday, April 10.
Read alsoMexico requests international condemnation and accuses Ecuador before the ICJ for breaking into its embassy
With Reuters and EFE
