The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, assured that he does not regret having ordered the assault on the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest Jorge Glas, former vice president of Rafael Correa (2007-2017), to whom the Mexican Government had given asylum. hours before.
“I have no regrets,” said Noboa in an interview given last week to the Australian channel SBS and broadcast this Monday, the president’s first interaction with the press since the beginning of this crisis with Mexico.
Faced with the almost unanimous condemnation of the international community for breaking the inviolability of a diplomatic headquarters, Noboa admitted that “it was a very difficult decision to make,” but that he did it because his Government considers that Mexico was the first to violate international conventions.
“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 to escape that we were aware of,” declared Noboa.
“We condemn the fact that some governments use their embassies under the façade of a political refuge that in reality is impunity, it is saving criminals from their sentences,” he added.
The Ecuadorian president recalled that the Caracas Asylum Convention states that asylum cannot be given to a person prosecuted in ordinary courts for common crimes.
The former vice president was under an arrest warrant and placed in preventive detention in the case of the reconstruction works of the strong earthquake that occurred in 2016, where he is accused of alleged embezzlement (embezzlement of public funds).
He also had to return to prison to finish serving an eight-year prison sentence for two convictions of bribery and illicit association, of which he already served nearly five years when at the end of 2022 he was released thanks to a controversial judicial resolution of precautionary measures. .
“In this case Jorge Glas had a sentence, and he had to be in jail,” reiterated Noboa, for whom Glas “had a fair trial.”
However, the former vice president, who held the position during the presidential term of Rafael Correa and at the beginning of the administration of Lenín Moreno (2017-2021), has always rejected the accusations against him and has declared himself a victim of ‘lawfare’ (use of judicial apparatus against political adversaries).
Glas’s detention inside the Mexican Embassy in Quito was declared illegal and arbitrary by an Ecuadorian court last Friday, but he was imprisoned as he had yet to serve his sentence for the Bribery case, in which Correa was also sentenced, and for illicit association in the Odebrecht case.
“I WANT TO BE SEEN AS SOMEONE RIGHTEOUS”
Asked if he did it to give a heavy-handed image a few days before the holding of a referendum called by him on reforms in security, investments, justice and employment, Noboa commented that he wants to be seen as “someone who is fair, not necessarily like a tough guy.”
“If Glas had escaped using Embassy vehicles and Mexican Government planes, I would have seemed very weak to everyone. Now that I’ve done it, they see me as very tough. It is difficult to please everyone, but the majority of people in the country are happy with this decision,” said Noboa.
Regarding the way he plans to solve the crisis with Mexico, the Ecuadorian president said that he will seek to have lunch with López Obrador.
“I will invite López Obrador to eat ceviche, and we can probably also eat some tacos and talk, when he is ready,” he said.
The irruption of state forces into the Mexican Embassy led the López Obrador Government to break relations with Ecuador and denounce it before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, considering that its sovereignty and also international law were violated.
With information from EFE
