Tensions between the two nations erupted the day before when Mexico Ecuador viewed remarks made by Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on the most recent elections, which Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa won, as “very unfortunate.”
Ecuadorian police officers on Friday forcibly broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito, where former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas is holed up.
The raid took place hours after the Mexican government granted Glas political asylum as diplomatic tensions between both countries deepened.
The police broke the external doors of the Mexican diplomatic headquarters in the Mexico Ecuador capital and entered the main patio.
A day earlier, tensions between the two countries escalated after Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made statements that Ecuador considered “very unfortunate” about the last elections in which the Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa won.
(Capital of bolivia: La Paz and Sucre). In reaction, the Ecuadorian government declared the Mexican ambassador persona non grata.
The situation of former Vice President Glas was not immediately known. Uniformed officers closed the main access avenue to the site.
The Mexican embassy in Quito remained under heavy police guard late Friday.
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Why was Glas in the Mexican Embassy?
In December 2023, Glas, who has been convicted twice on corruption charges, sought asylum from Mexico, arguing that he was being persecuted by the attorney general’s office and has been lodged at the Mexican Embassy in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito since.
The Mexican foreign ministry on Friday granted political asylum to the vice president after Ecuador’s government made Mexico’s ambassador persona non grata amid growing tensions between the two countries.
Ecuador’s presidential communications department said in a statement that Glas, who has been “sentenced to imprisonment by the Ecuadoran justice system, has been arrested tonight and placed under the orders of the competent authorities”.
What are the charges against the VP?
The ex-Vice President of Ecuador, Glas was released from prison last November after serving time for corruption in a vast scandal involving the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.
He faces another arrest warrant for allegedly diverting funds that were intended for reconstruction efforts after a devastating earthquake in 2015.
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