health condition

Bogota. Former Colombian President Ernesto Samper and other progressive leaders who make up the Puebla Group proposed a humanitarian mission to verify the health status of former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who remains in prison in his country after being detained in a police raid on the embassy. Mexican in Quito, where he was a refugee.

The proposal disclosed on Thursday night is a response to the three letters written by Glas that reached Samper, as reported by the former president on Thursday, addressed to the presidents of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. In the letters the former vice president requests help from the international community.

“Thank you for the asylum… I am in the worst prison in Ecuador and on a hunger strike. Help me. Here there is a brutal persecution against all progressives. International aid can do something,” indicates Glas’s letter addressed to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and released by Samper’s press office.

Glas, 54, was sent to the hospital on April 8 after suffering decompensation because he refused to eat food, according to the National Secretariat for Care of Prisoners of Liberty of Ecuador. However, his defense attorney Andrés Villegas pointed out that his client was admitted for a medication overdose.

The former vice president, sentenced for corruption and wanted by justice in another case for the same crime, was arrested on April 5 by Ecuadorian security forces in a violent invasion of the Mexican diplomatic headquarters, where Glas had received asylum a day before. . After the raid, Mexico broke relations with Ecuador.

An Ecuadorian judge declared that Glas’ detention was illegal, however, she ordered him to remain in jail to serve an outstanding sentence for corruption.

The Puebla Group advocated that the figure of “restorative habeas corpus” be recognized, that is, that when the illegality of the capture of the former vice president was declared “the right to asylum that had already been recognized by Mexico must be recognized.”

The group brings together dozens of Latin American leaders, including former presidents Rafael Correa, of Ecuador; José Mujica, from Uruguay; Alberto Fernández, from Argentina and Samper.

The international community has questioned the raid. Venezuela ordered the closure of its embassy in Ecuador as an act of protest and Honduras called its charge d’affaires in that country for consultations.

The Mexican government denounced Ecuador before the International Court of Justice, the main judicial body of the United Nations based in The Hague, for the invasion of its embassy. The Court will hold public hearings on April 30 and May 1 to review the complaint.