Former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas appealed to the leaders of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil to intervene on his behalf after he was arrested in a police raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito on April 5.
I’m in the worst prison in Ecuador and on hunger strike. Help me,” Glas wrote to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a manuscript dated April 15, revealed by AFP this Thursday.
The former official, convicted of corruption, is in a high-security prison in Guayaquil.
The armed attack on him led to Mexico breaking off relations with Ecuador and filing a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Quito considers the political asylum granted to Glas a day before the police operation illegal and claims that the figure does not take into account common crimes.
But the Mexican government believes there are signs of political persecution against the former number two in the government of socialist President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), who sought refuge in the embassy last December when he was granted conditional release.
Glas, 54, also thanks López Obrador for the asylum and asks him for “forgiveness as an Ecuadorian” for breaking into the diplomatic headquarters.
There is a brutal persecution of all progressives here. Only international aid can make a difference,” the former vice president emphasized in letters to López Obrador and the presidents of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
In his message to Petro and Lula, also dated April 15, Glas also states that he was kidnapped from the embassy under “torture”.
A video from inside the building that Mexico attached to its lawsuit shows the agents carrying Glas, apparently handcuffed, and also shows Mexican diplomat Roberto Canseco being dragged by the neck.
Petro had previously announced that he would ask the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for precautionary measures in favor of Glas, who, according to Ecuadorian authorities, had to be hospitalized between April 8 and 9 for refusing to comply in prison to receive food.
The former vice president fled to the embassy after the court issued an arrest warrant against him in another alleged corruption case.
With information from Reuters.
ORP
