An Ecuadorian court this Friday declared the detention of former vice president Jorge Glas “illegal” and “arbitrary” at the Mexican Embassy, which was attacked by the Police, but he kept him in prison as he still had an eight-year sentence to serve. in prison for two current convictions issued in past years.
The Specialized Chamber for Family, Children, Adolescence and Adolescent Offenders of the National Court of Justice of Ecuador, made up of judges Mónica Heredia, Liz Barrera and Adrián Rojas, considered that Glas’s rights were violated when the Ecuadorian State did not comply with the procedure contemplated in national regulations for the search of diplomatic missions.
Thus, The court denied the request for a writ of habeas corpus with which Glas sought to have his detention annulled. and he will be delivered to Mexico or another country that gives him asylum, as the Mexican Government had given him hours before his arrest, considering him politically persecuted.
“It would be appropriate to order the immediate freedom of the affected person, but there are res judicata convictions,” the court determined, since the former vice president of Rafael Correa (2007-2017) had been released from prison in 2022 without completing the pending sentences, thanks to a controversial judicial resolution of precautionary measures.
Glas 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.
Frustrated ‘pre-freedom’
He had recently 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.
However, Glas was captured for having a preventive detention order in 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 is included in the Ecuadorian penal code. punishable by between 10 and 13 years in prison.
The court validated the arrest order as it was given within the parameters contemplated by Ecuadorian regulations, with sufficient elements of conviction about the commission of the crime and an existing risk of flight, since at that time Glas 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 Ecuadorian police and military forces attacked the Embassy to arrest Glas.
Glas denounces torture
From La Roca, the maximum security prison in Ecuador where he was held, Glas 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 was taken from the Mexican Embassy.
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.
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The court that heard the habeas corpus appeal did not see responsibility for the actions of President Daniel Noboa or the Minister of Government and Interior, Mónica Palencia, and declared itself incompetent to decide on the origin of the asylum that Mexico gave him.
For the Ecuadorian Government, the asylum provided to Glas was illegal and contravenes the Diplomatic Asylum Convention, which indicates that people prosecuted in ordinary justice for common crimes cannot receive this benefit.