Mexico presented a complaint against Ecuador to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Thursday, after the police raid against its embassy in Quito which caused the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries and an international outcry.
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In its complaint, Mexico requests that Ecuador be suspended from the United Nations “until it presents a public apology, recognizing the violations of the fundamental principles and norms of international law”, declared Thursday, April 11 during a press conference by Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena. The objective is to ” guarantee compensation for the moral damage inflicted on the Mexican State and its nationals “, underlined the minister. We must prevent a similar act from being “repeated” elsewhere in the world, said President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Police officers entered the Mexican embassy in Quito on April 5 to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice-president accused of corruption, Jorge Glas, who had taken refuge there.
Mexico immediately announced the severance of diplomatic relations with Ecuador and at the same time stated his intention to assert before the ICJ the inviolable nature of diplomatic representations, established by the Vienna Convention of 1961.
Read alsoEcuador under fire after raid on Mexican embassy
Jorge Glas in the eye of the storm
For his part, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa defended the raid on the embassy as being necessary to apprehend Jorge Glas because he presented a “ imminent risk of escape “, affirming that he was ready to “ resolve any dispute » with Mexico. Accused of having embezzled public funds intended for the reconstruction of coastal cities after an earthquake in 2016 and of having participated in the corruption system of the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, Jorge Glas was sentenced in 2017 to eight years in prison . Released in 2022 thanks to a legal appeal, he then took refuge in December 2023 in the Mexican embassy in Quito, before receiving political asylum.
Close to the former president Rafael Correahe was led Monday at the Guayaquil Naval Hospital, in southwest Ecuador. The police report mentions an overdose of anxiolytic and anti-depressant drugs which plunged him into a deep coma. The next day, he returned to the high security prison in Guayaquil. Rafael Correa assured Wednesday that Jorge Glas, 54, was on hunger strike. “ He didn’t eat anything and went on a hunger strike “, he assured on the social network
Rafael Correa, who led Ecuador from 2007 to 2017, was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption and lives in exile in Belgium.
This week, the name of former President Correa appeared in the testimonies of two witnesses protected by the Prosecutor’s Office in investigations into connections between mafia networks and the state apparatus in Ecuador, reports our correspondent in Quito, Eric Samson.
Alex Palacios was last year the confidant of Wilman Terán, then president of the Judicial Council, now arrested during the“Metastasis” operation. According to Palacios, Terán would have discreetly given a Santo Domingo judge a draft resolution allowing the release of the former vice-president of Rafael Correa and then Lenin Moreno, Jorge Glas. Judge Emerson Curipallo, now arrested, would have allowed Glas to be released. In exchange for this service, Terán would then have obtained the support of Rafael Correa’s supporters to become president of the Judicature which he would have placed at the service of the former head of state.
Also heard by the Prosecutor’s Office, a former member of the Judicial Council, Xavier Muñoz confirmed that Terán was in regular contact with former President Rafael Correa. Xavier Muñoz said Correa offered him political support if he supported Wilman Terán. These two protected witnesses painted the portrait of a justice system with two main objectives: to annul Rafael Correa’s eight-year prison sentence to allow his return and to obtain the release of Jorge Glas.
Accusations denied by Rafael Correa whose movement recently condemned the capture of Jorge Glas by the Ecuadorian police in the premises of the Mexican embassy, causing the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Ecuadorian Minister of Labor, Ivonne Nuñez, filed a complaint on Thursday against Mr. Correa for “treason”.
Germany said on Thursday it was trying to contact former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who has dual German-Ecuadorian citizenship. “We are trying to establish direct contact with him through the Ecuadorian authorities,” said a source at the German Foreign Ministry. The German authorities are following the case “very closely”, according to the same source.