Latin American governments rally around Mexico after embassy raid in Ecuador
QUITO (Reuters) - Latin American governments, including regional heavyweight Brazil, rallied around Mexico on Saturday after its embassy in Ecuador was raided to arrest a controversial politician who had been granted asylum by Mexican authorities.
The late Friday night seizure of Jorge Glas, Ecuador’s former vice president who had been convicted twice on graft charges, caused outrage in Mexico City, which suspended relations with Quito.
Glas, 54, who had a preventive arrest warrant out on another corruption case, had been holed up in the embassy in Quito since seeking political asylum in December, a request Mexico had granted earlier on Friday.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blasted the unusual diplomatic incursion and arrest as an “authoritarian” act as well as a breach of international law and Mexico’s sovereignty.
Under international law, embassies are considered the sovereign territory of the country they represent. The government of Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa argued that Mexico’s asylum protections were illegal because of Glas’ corruption charges.
Sonia
Vera, the international
Demonstrators gather outside the Mexican embassy in Ecuador to ask for the freedom of former Vice President Jorge Glas, Quito, April 6, 2024. (Reuters photo)
lawyer for Glas, said by telephone on Saturday that his team was requesting help on an inter-American level with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, as well as with the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly.
Glas, who was vice president under the leftist government of Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017, has complained that he is being persecuted for his political affiliation, which Ecuador’s government
denies.
Video circulating on social media showed him being taken by police convoy to the airport in Quito, flanked by heavily armed soldiers. He then boarded a plane en route to a jail in Guayaquil, the Andean nation’s largest city.
On Saturday, governments across the political spectrum in Latin America - including Brazil and Colombia on the left, and Argentina and Uruguay on the right - sharply criticized the storming of the embassy to arrest Glas.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is on high alert and preparing for a possible attack by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to Israel’s strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria, a U.S. official said on Friday.
“We’re definitely at a high state of vigilance,” the official said in confirming a CNN report that said an attack could come in the next week.
Suspected Israeli warplanes bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus on Monday in a strike that killed an Iranian military commander and marked a major escalation in Israel’s war with its regional adversaries.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has said that seven Iranian military advisers died in the strike, including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in its Quds Force, which is an elite foreign espionage and paramilitary arm.
Iran has said it reserves the right “to take a decisive response.”
U.S. President Joe Biden discussed the threat from Iran in a phone call on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Our teams have been in regular and continuous contact since then. The United States fully supports the defense of Israel against threats from Iran,” a senior Biden administration official said. (Reuters) Two Russian strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killed eight civilians and injured at least 10 early on Saturday and in the afternoon, regional officials said.
Ukraine’s national police said the attack was launched by drones, while regional officials said Russian forces used missiles and bombs. The police and local authorities published pictures of fires that had broken out on city streets and next to buildings.
“As of this morning, there are 6 dead and 10 wounded as a result of the night strike on Shevchenkivskyi district,” Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app. Later the death toll rose to seven.
“The attack hit residential areas - at least nine highrise buildings, three dormitories, a number of administrative buildings, a shop, a petrol station, a service station and cars were damaged,” he said.
The strike occurred just after midnight, news reports said.
“Overnight Russia launched another attack against Kharkiv - Ukraine’s 2nd largest city - killing 6 civilians, injuring others & damaging homes & schools,” U.S. Ambassador Bridget A. Brink said on X social network.