Mexico cuts diplomatic ties with Ecuador after arrest inside embassy

Ecuadorian police on Friday night arrested a politician who had taken refuge in the Mexican Embassy in Quito, after what Mexico described as a forced entry that violated the country’s sovereignty.

The move was a rare instance of one government entering another’s embassy to make an arrest. The episode prompted Mexico to suspend diplomatic relations with Ecuador and inflamed tensions, which were already high between the two countries.

The politician, Jorge Glas, a former vice president of Ecuador, had been sentenced to prison for corruption, the country’s presidential office said in a statement, which added that there had been a warrant out for his arrest. Glas, who had been living at the embassy in Ecuador’s capital since December, was granted political asylum by Mexico earlier Friday.

The office of Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, added that the arrest had gone forward because Mexico had abused the immunities and privileges granted to the diplomatic mission, and that Glas’s asylum was given “contrary to the conventional legal framework.”

Although it was difficult to immediately confirm exactly how the arrest happened, footage shared by Ecuadorian news outlets showed what appeared to be the aftermath: Police officers held back onlookers as two black cars, sirens blaring, drove out of the embassy. A man identified by local reporters as Roberto Canseco, the Mexican official in charge at the embassy, could be seen shouting, “No!” before officers pushed him to the ground.

Canseco told reporters that he was about to leave the embassy when, suddenly, he was faced with “police, thieves, who entered the embassy overnight.” He said he physically tried to stop them from entering. “They hit me, I was hit on the ground,” he said. “Like criminals, they broke into the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador.”

The arrest occurred after months of growing tensions between the two nations, in part over Glas, whom Ecuadorian authorities consider a fugitive. Both sides have been trading barbs, which escalated this past week after the Mexican president appeared to question the legitimacy of Ecuador’s most recent presidential election. The Ecuadorian government on Thursday effectively ordered Mexico’s ambassador to leave, declaring her a “persona non grata.” Mexico condemned that declaration Friday and also granted Glas asylum.

Attacks on embassies carry particular weight because a 1961 treaty, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, allows them to be used as sanctuary. A host country’s police force cannot normally enter an embassy without the permission of its diplomatic staff.

Diplomatic strains have grown across Latin America in recent months. President Gustavo Petro of Colombia has expelled Argentine diplomats — and then reinstated them — amid insults from President Javier Milei of Argentina. Milei has sparred frequently with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico and the government of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.

Shortly after the arrest of Glas, López Obrador issued a statement calling the episode a “flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico.”

He added that Ecuadorian police had used force to enter the embassy.