Ecuador: court declares the detention of former vice president Glas illegal

An Ecuadorian court ruled that the arrest of former vice president Jorge Glas at the Embassy of Mexico It was illegal and arbitrary, since the Police attacked the embassy. However, despite this decision, Glas will remain in prison because he still has an 8-year sentence to serve, derived from two previous convictions. The Specialized Chamber for Family, Children, Adolescence and Adolescent Offenders of the National Court of Justice determined that Glas’s rights were violated by not following the procedure established by national regulations for the search of diplomatic missions.

In this way, the court denied the request for the writ of habeas corpus with which glass sought to have his arrest annulled and handed over to Mexico or another country that gives him asylum, as the Mexican Government had given him hours before his detention considering him a politically persecuted person.

“It would be appropriate to order the immediate release of the affected person, but there are res judicata convictions“, determined the court, since the former vice president of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) had been released from prison in 2022 without finishing serving the pending sentences, thanks to a controversial judicial resolution of precautionary measures.

glass He was sentenced in 2017 to six years in prison for illicit association in the Odebrecht case, and in 2020 to eight years in prison for bribery in the Bribery case, regarding the irregular financing of the Correísta political movement, in which the former president was also convicted.

Frustrated ‘pre-freedom’

Recently, he had managed to combine the two sentences to serve only eight years and was seeking the prison benefit of ‘pre-freedom’ so as not to have to return to prison after having served most of the sentence, after having been imprisoned for nearly five years. between 2017 and 2022, but this was denied.

Nevertheless, glass He was captured for having a warrant preventive prison within the case of reconstruction works after the strong earthquake of 2016, where he is accused of alleged embezzlement (embezzlement of public funds), a crime that in the Ecuadorian penal code is punishable by between 10 and 13 years in prison.

The court validated the arrest order as it was issued within the parameters contemplated by Ecuadorian regulations, with sufficient elements of conviction regarding the commission of the crime and an existing flight risk, since at that time glass He was already staying at the Mexican Embassy.

The former vice president was at the Mexican diplomatic headquarters since December 17, 2023 to request asylum after declaring himself a politically persecuted person and victim of ‘lawfare’ (use of the judicial apparatus against political adversaries), as he considers himself innocent of all the accusations in his against.

The Government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador granted him asylum on April 5, in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with Ecuador, and hours later the assault on the Police Forces Embassy and Ecuadorian military to stop Glas.

Glas denounces torture

From La Roca, the maximum security prison in Ecuador where he was confined, glass He participated in the hearing by videoconference and stated in his testimony that during his detention he was a victim of torture, having received a beating with kicks, knees and blows, among which he was taken out of the Embassy of Mexico.

The former vice president said that the men who detained him had their faces covered and never identified themselves or notified him why he was being detained until they transferred him to the Flagrant Unit, where they then read his rights.

The court that heard the habeas corpus appeal did not see responsibility for what the president did. Daniel Noboa, nor of the Minister of Government and Interior, Mónica Palencia, and declared herself incompetent to resolve the origin of the asylum that gave her Mexico.

For the Ecuadorian Government, the asylum provided to glass was illegal and contravenes the Diplomatic Asylum Convention, which indicates that people prosecuted in ordinary justice for common crimes cannot receive this benefit.