Former vice president Jorge Glas reported stable in Ecuador

The former vice president of Ecuador Jorge Glas, arrested last Friday after a police raid at the Mexican Embassy in Quito, is stable and will be transferred to prison in the next few hours after having recovered in a hospital from a decompensation reported by a police report. He blames it on a possible overdose of medication and that the prison authorities relate to his refusal to eat food.

The National Service for Comprehensive Care of Adults Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the State penitentiary agency, recalled this Tuesday in a statement that Glas remained under medical observation during the last hours at the Naval hospital in the city of Guayaquil.

According to the evaluations carried out, “at the moment he has stable health parameters and within the normal range, so he can receive the corresponding medical discharge,” he noted in the letter.

The SNAI added that “during the course of this April 9”, In strict compliance with security protocols, Glas will return to La Rocathe maximum security prison in Ecuador where he was held after his arrest at the Mexican Embassy.

In that prison, the SNAI noted, “the protection of the physical integrity” of Glas will be ensured.

Andrés Villegas, Glas’s lawyer, considered the SNAI statement to be brief and complained about the lack of official information about the real situation surrounding Glas’s health breakdown that occurred on Monday.

This is because a police report – to which Glas’s defense had access – mentions an alleged poisoning due to medication, while the SNAI refers to decompensation due to lack of food intake.

Villegas told EFE that they hope to receive official information about the situation of Glas, who was minister and vice president during the presidential term of Rafael Correa (2007-2017), with whom he has been friends since his youth. He was also vice president of Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) in the first months of his mandate.

Glas, who had entered the Mexican Embassy in Quito last December, requested asylum from the Mexican State, which granted it last Friday, and hours later the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, ordered the police assault on the diplomatic headquarters to stop him, which caused the breakdown of relations on the part of Mexico.

The assault on the embassy has received international condemnation, while Ecuador justifies its action by the fight against corruption, since Glas is prosecuted for alleged embezzlement of funds in a case regarding the reconstruction of the province of Manabí after the 2016 earthquake, and has yet to complete an eight-year sentence in two other cases, for which he already spent nearly five years in prison between 2017 and 2022.