In his first statements after the questioned police assault on the Mexican embassy in Quito, the Ecuadorian president, Daniel Noboa, was convinced that he had acted correctly despite the practically unanimous condemnation of international diplomacy. “I don't regret it,” Noboa said in an interview with Australia's SBS channel broadcast on Monday night, adding that “it was a very difficult decision to make.”
The president wanted to be conciliatory with his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and said that he will try to maintain a relaxed meeting with him. Mexico broke diplomatic relations with Ecuador after the incident.
Noboa reiterated the arguments that his government already put forward to justify the violent entry of the police, on the night of April 5, into the Mexican diplomatic legation to arrest the former Ecuadorian vice president, Jorge Glas, who had taken refuge in the embassy since last December and whom he himself day Mexico had officially granted political asylum.
"It is first a violation of the Mexican government, which is then followed by another violation, but we had to act, we had to make a decision, because there was a plan (by Glas) to escape that we were aware of," Noboa said.
Although the Vienna Convention enshrines the “inviolability” of diplomatic headquarters, Ecuador clings to article 3 of the Asylum Convention of the Organization of American States (OAS), which states that “it is not lawful to grant asylum to persons who at the time of requesting it are indicted or prosecuted before competent ordinary courts and for common crimes, or are convicted of such crimes and by said courts."
In this sense, Noboa condemned "the fact that some governments use their embassies under the façade of a political refuge that is actually impunity, to save criminals from their sentences." The president added that "in this case Jorge Glas had a sentence and had to be in jail."
Noboa was conciliatory with López Obrador and said he was willing to invite the Mexican president “to eat a ceviche and, probably, we can also eat some tacos and talk, when he is ready.”
The president stated that Ecuador “is happy with this decision” and believes that with his order to enter the diplomatic legation he prevented Glas from escaping “using Embassy vehicles and Mexican government planes.”
Jorge Glas was vice president of Ecuador between 2013 and early 2018, and was arrested and imprisoned at the end of 2017, while he was still in office. He spent almost five years in prison, of the eight years that he had to serve for various corruption crimes, and was provisionally released at the end of 2022 in a controversial judicial decision. However, Glas was subject to a new arrest warrant for charging him with the crime of misappropriation of public funds intended for the reconstruction of the 2016 earthquake.
Close to former progressive president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) – convicted by Ecuadorian justice and exiled in Belgium – Glas considers himself politically persecuted, a victim of lawfare.
In recent days, expressions of support for Glas and requests that he be released from prison and handed over to Mexico as political asylum have proliferated outside Ecuador. The last to do so was the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, who yesterday announced that this Tuesday he will ask at the virtual meeting of leaders of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) that Glas “be granted political asylum and return to Mexico.” to recover physically.
After being forcibly removed from the Mexican embassy in Quito, Glas was transferred to a maximum security prison but three days later he had to be admitted to a hospital for an alleged suicide attempt.
For his part, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, decided on Monday to suspend the bilateral summit with Ecuador scheduled for this month, where a joint meeting of the cabinets of ministers of both countries was to take place, as a result of the assault on the Mexican embassy.
Even in Spain, Podemos, through its general secretary, Ione Belarra, has asked the Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, to demand that Ecuador release Glas so that he can travel to Mexico.
On the other hand, a Mexican deputy, Gerardo Fernández Noroña, presented this Monday a complaint against Noboa before the Attorney General's Office of the Republic of Mexico in which he requests the arrest and extradition of the Ecuadorian president for the "kidnapping" of Glas and for the assault of the Mexican legation in Quito, which also led to the attack on its diplomats.
