He President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, He assured that he does not regret having ordered the assault on the Embassy of Mexico in Quito to stop Jorge Glas, former vice president of Rafael Correato which the mexican government He had given him asylum hours before.
“I have no regrets,” he 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.
Given the almost unanimous condemnation of the international community for breaking the inviolability of a diplomatic headquartersNoboa 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 governmentwhich is then followed by another rape, but we had to act, we had to make a decision, because there was a plan to escape that we were aware of,” Noboa stated.
“We condemn the fact that some governments use their embassies under the façade of a political refuge which in reality is impunity, is saving the criminals of their sentences,” he added.
He Ecuadorian ruler remembered that the Caracas Asylum Convention points out 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 “He 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 At the beginning of Lenín Moreno’s administration (2017-2021), he has always rejected the accusations against him and has declared himself a victim of ‘lawfare’ (use of the judicial apparatus against political adversaries).
The arrest of Glas inside the Mexican Embassy in Quito It was declared illegal and arbitrary by an Ecuadorian court last Friday, but he was imprisoned as he had pending his sentence for the Bribery case, in which Correa was also sentenced, and for illicit association in the Odebrecht case.
Daniel Noboa wants to be seen as someone who is fair
Asked if he did it to give an image of a heavy hand a few days before the holding of a referendum called by him on reforms in security, investments, justice and employmentNoboa commented that he wants to be seen as “someone who is fair, not necessarily a tough guy.”
“Yeah glass Had I 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,” Noboa said.
Regarding the way he plans to solve the crisis with Mexicothe Ecuadorian president said that he will seek to have lunch with Lopez Obrador.
“I’ll invite López Obrador to eat ceviche, and we can probably also eat some tacos and talk, when he’s ready,” he said.
The irruption of state forces in the Mexico’s embassy led the López Obrador government to break relations with Ecuador and report it to the International Court of Justice in The Hague considering that their sovereignty and also international law were violated.