Ecuador’s ex-vice-president attempts suicide after raid
A FORMER vice-president of Ecuador is reported to have tried to take his own life after being dragged by armed police from the Mexican embassy in Quito in a breach of diplomatic protocol.
Jorge Glas, who was evading potential pre-trial detention on corruption charges, was taken, unconscious, from his jail cell to hospital on Monday after an apparent overdose of sedatives and painkillers.
He had been detained early on Saturday in the raid by Ecuadorian authorities, hours after Mexico’s president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had granted Glas, 54, asylum.
Police stormed the building, climbing over its perimeter walls and even manhandling the acting ambassador, as they searched for Glas. He had served as vice president from 2013 to 2018.
The raid, a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention, achieved the impossible in uniting squabbling Latin American leaders, from Argentina’s Javier Milei to Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, in condemnation.
It also prompted veiled criticism from Washington. Brian Nichols, the assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere, said the US “takes very seriously the obligation of host countries under international law to respect diplomatic missions”.
Yet Daniel Noboa, Ecuador’s president, said on Monday: “My obligation is to comply with the rulings of the justice system, and we could not allow sentenced criminals involved in very serious crimes to be given asylum.” The leader has seen his approval rating soar to 80 per cent following his crackdown on street gangs earlier this year.
Glas had already served most of a sixyear sentence for allegedly taking bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction firm implicated in high-level graft cases across Latin America.
He was wanted for questioning in a separate corruption scandal.