Ecuador: Former Vice President Glas Returns to La Roca Prison
Jorge Glas seated on the right, Jan. 5, 2025. X/ @InfoNodal
January 6, 2025 Hour: 9:14 am
Previously, he had been temporarily transferred out of this maximum-security prison due to incidents among the inmates.
On Sunday afternoon, prison authorities of President Daniel Noboa’s government informed that former Vice President Jorge Glas returned to La Roca prison, after security forces restored order inside the prison.
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A few hours earlier, he had been temporarily transferred out of this maximum-security prison located in Guayaquil due to incidents among the inmates. Glas’s attorney, Sonia Vera, said that the leftist politician had been transferred from the prison following an attempt on his life.
“The attempt on Jorge Glas’s life is the result of a state that has condemned him to danger, torture, and a slow death. His emergency evacuation confirms what we have denounced repeatedly: they are deliberately playing with his life,” she said.
“Jorge is exposed to an environment that does not protect his life but threatens it day after day. If anything happens to him, it will be a state crime. This reality urgently demands the intervention of international organizations,” Vera added, noting that authorities did not allow another of Glas’s lawyers to see him.
Hours after the incident, the situation around the prison was calm, with no presence of police or military vehicles. Following Glas’s temporary transfer, an operation was conducted to control weapons, ammunition, and explosives, but the authorities have not specified whether any items were confiscated.
Glas served as vice president between 2013 and 2017 during the administration of President Rafael Correa. Subsequently, for a few months, he also held the vice presidency during Lenin Moreno’s administration (2017–2021) until investigations against him began.
At the time of his detention at the Mexican Embassy in Quito on April 5, 2024, on the day he had been granted political asylum, Glas still had an eight-year prison sentence to serve for two corruption convictions, for which he had already served approximately five years.
At the end of 2022, he was released by a judge’s order. Nevertheless, a new arrest warrant against Glas was issued as part of a third criminal case against him for alleged embezzlement of public funds in reconstruction projects following the 2016 earthquake.
teleSUR/ JF Source: EFE
