The Attorney General’s Office of Ecuador reported that lawyers Michael Woods, Sean Murphy, Aldredo Crossato and Omi Sender will be in charge of defending Ecuador in the sessions of the ICJ, scheduled for this Tuesday and Wednesday.
On April 11th, the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador denounced Ecuador for violating the Vienna Convention by violently breaking into the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas, who was kidnapped after requesting political asylum.
On the other hand, Ecuador sued Mexico this Monday because, according to the Foreign Ministry, it contravened international conventions granting asylum to those prosecuted for common crimes or those convicted in ordinary courts.
“In the government (of Ecuador) there is no conscience, nor any reflection on the barbarity committed by attacking an Embassy and kidnapping an asylum seeker. It is only an attempt to justify a brutal violation of international law, condemned by the world,” wrote former Deputy Foreign Minister Fernando Yépez on X.
The former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa, leader of the Citizen Revolution (RC) movement, questioned why Daniel Noboa’s government did not go to the international court before raiding the embassy and kidnapping an asylum seeker.
Doctor of Jurisprudence Alejandro Vanegas described the legal strategy of the Ecuadorian government in the ICJ as “a mockery for the world community.”
Meanwhile, former Vice President Glas, whom Mexico considers politically persecuted, is in a maximum security prison even though the National Court of Justice decreed that his detention was “illegal and arbitrary”. He faces an eight-year sentence for the Odebrecht and Bribery cases and is also accused of alleged embezzlement for reconstruction works after the devastating 2016 earthquake on the Ecuadorian coast.
International jurists and experts assure that there is no evidence against the politician, who is a member of the RC, and who wrote letters requesting help from López Obrador himself and the presidents of Colombia and Brazil, Gustavo Petro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
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