He was imprisoned in April 2024 inside the Mexican Embassy in Quito by officers who stormed the diplomatic headquarters.

On Tuesday, Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry (SRE) reiterated its call to protect the life, personal integrity, and fundamental rights of former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas while he is granted the safe passage that will allow the Mexican state to provide him with the international protection to which he is entitled under international law.

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Glas was imprisoned in April 2024 inside the Mexican Embassy in Quito by police officers who stormed the diplomatic headquarters hours after the former vice president had been granted diplomatic asylum by the Mexican government. Glas had declared himself a political persecuted individual due to the convictions he has accumulated in Ecuador since 2017.

The Mexican Foreign Affairs Ministry took note of Resolution 13/2025 issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which follows up on and expands the precautionary measures granted in 2019 in favor of Glas to protect his life and personal integrity.

The SRE explained that, in accordance with applicable international law, Mexico granted political asylum to Glas on April 5, 2024. That same night, Glas “was illegally taken from the Mexican Embassy in Quito, where he was under protection.”

This Tuesday, the IACHR requested that Ecuador take measures to protect the health and life of former Vice President Glas, calling for a comprehensive medical evaluation in a hospital and an improvement in his prison conditions, including his transfer out of La Roca, Ecuador’s maximum-security prison.

The IACHR accepted a request from Glas’s legal team to expand the precautionary measures already granted in 2019, warning that “his mental health is in a particularly serious state.” The commission urged the Ecuadorian state to properly address his physical and mental health needs.

However, the IACHR did not order the Ecuadorian state to release Glas or recognize the asylum status granted by Mexico, which would allow him to be received in that country, as his lawyers had requested.

At the time of his arrest, the former vice president—one of the key figures in President Rafael Correa’s government (2007–2017)—was still serving an eight-year prison sentence for two corruption cases. Additionally, he had been indicted in a third case for alleged embezzlement.

In previous months, his lawyers had warned of an “imminent risk” of another suicide attempt by Glas, who was taking over 40 medications a day, some of them psychiatric drugs. This followed allegations that Glas had attempted to take his own life with a drug overdose just days after being reimprisoned.

On October 28, 2024, the IACHR visited Glas and subsequently issued a ruling this Tuesday, urging the Ecuadorian state to conduct a full medical evaluation of Glas in a hospital and to establish an independent technical panel to ensure compliance with these precautionary measures.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE

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