Mexico demands ‘guarantees’ for diplomats in Ecuador after assault on embassy

This Saturday, Mexico demanded “guarantees” for its diplomatic personnel to leave Ecuadorafter the police assault on its embassy in Quito the day before that culminated in the arrest of former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas, who took refuge there and was wanted by his country’s justice system.

The shocking operation, with no immediate precedent in the world, led Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to immediately break diplomatic relations with Ecuador for what he described as a “flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico.”

This Saturday, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded “the necessary guarantees from Ecuador for the departure of Mexican (diplomatic) personnel,” according to a statement.

Images taken by AFP on Friday night show several armed Ecuadorian soldiers with a battering ram in front of the Mexican embassy in Quito. At least one of them scaled the fence surrounding the building to enter and arrest Glas, who faces corruption charges and who was granted asylum by Mexico on Friday after having given him refuge for months.

The Mexican embassy in Quito remained surrounded by police this Saturday morning and the country’s flag had been removed from its flagpole in the building’s patio, an AFP photographer confirmed.

The night before, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena told the media that she was waiting for a response from the Ecuadorian authorities to send a plane to evacuate her diplomats. “We are looking at what is the best way to get our staff out (…) it is all staff with their families,” she said.

The Ecuadorian government has not yet commented this Saturday.

BRUTAL

Glas, vice president of the socialist Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017, has a preventive detention order for alleged embezzlement in public works contracted after the devastating earthquake on the Ecuadorian coast in 2016.

This Saturday the 54-year-old politician left the judicial facility where he was being held, in the middle of a security operation with several armored vehicles, an AFP photographer confirmed.

He was taken to a maximum security prison in Guayaquil, the country’s second city, according to the government.

Mexico described the operation as a “brutal irruption” and denounced “physical violence” against the head of mission Roberto Canseco, who was subdued to the ground by a uniformed man, according to images from Ecuadorian television. The diplomat is “fine” Just like the rest of the delegation, said Chancellor Bárcena.

The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, defended the measure, alleging that there was an “abuse of the immunities and privileges” granted to the diplomatic mission.

“The national government defends national sovereignty, without allowing anyone to interfere in the internal affairs of the country,” said the presidency of Ecuador in a series of messages posted on social network X at midnight.

Mexico announced that it will file a complaint against Ecuador before the International Court of Justice. The Vienna Convention guarantees the inviolability of the territory of an embassy.

CLIMBING

The diplomatic crisis began on Wednesday, when Mexican President López Obrador raised a parallel between the violence that marked the 2023 Ecuadorian presidential campaign, during which candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated, and the crime that is recorded in Mexico in the face of the elections. June 2 elections.

According to the Mexican president, the Villavicencio crime created a “rarefied atmosphere of violence” that, added to the “manipulation” by some media, caused the fall in the polls of the leftist candidate Luisa González and the rise of Noboa, who was the winner.

A harsh critic of former President Correa (2007-2017), Villavicencio was known for his denunciations of the strengthening of drug trafficking in the shadow of power.

The Noboa government considered that these comments “offend the Ecuadorian State”, since the country is still in “mourning” and expelled the Mexican ambassador Raquel Serur, who has not yet left the country.

In response, Mexico granted political asylum on Friday to Glas, who had remained a refugee in its diplomatic headquarters in Quito since December, alleging political persecution against him.

Ecuador described the decision as “illegal” and surrounded the embassy with police in a sign of “protest.” That night he launched the operation that resulted in the capture of the former vice president and the diplomatic breakup.

REGIONAL REACTIONS

The governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Honduras – all left-wing – condemned the operation by the Ecuadorian security forces this Saturday.

“All of this constitutes an action that has not been recorded even in the most atrocious dictatorships in the region, such as that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile or Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina,” the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Former President Correa, exiled in Belgium since 2017 and sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption, said that Glas was attacked during his detention.

“Jorge has difficulty walking because he was hit. All this is crazy,” Correa wrote on the social network X.

*bb