Mexico requests the suspension of Ecuador from the UN in the lawsuit it filed this Thursday against that country in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the assault on its embassy in Quito to capture former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas.
The sanction should come into force “as long as a public apology is not issued recognizing the violations of the fundamental principles and norms of international law,” said Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena, confirming the formalization of the complaint before the highest court of justice. international organization of the United Nations, based in The Hague.
This seeks to “guarantee the reparation of the moral damage inflicted on the Mexican State and its nationals,” added the chancellor at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s daily press conference.
OAS resolution condemned assault on the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador
The video published by Mexico that shows the entry of the Ecuadorian police into its embassy in Quito to arrest Jorge Glas
Police forces stormed the embassy last Friday night to capture Glas, accused of corruption and who hours before had received political asylum from Mexico. During the raid, the agents attacked the Mexican diplomat Roberto Canseco.
Due to this, the Mexican Government broke relations with Ecuador and announced the lawsuit before the ICJ.
When listing Mexico’s claims, Bárcena pointed out that it also seeks to establish a precedent so that a country that acts like Ecuador is “definitively expelled from the United Nations Organization.”
For his part, López Obrador trusted that the ICJ will act quickly.
«Justice must be quick and expeditious, and diplomatic immunity must be guaranteed (…). No one can be allowed to act that way (…). If international law is not respected, it will be the world of gorillas,” stressed the leftist president.
Germany third
Mexico’s demand will enter a first stage in which the arguments of both parties will be heard, explained Alejandro Celorio, legal consultant to the Foreign Ministry, at the same press conference.
“We are optimistic, international law welcomes Mexico,” said the official, who explained that in the course of the process other countries may intervene.
“We are sure that almost all of the States support Mexico’s arguments because these are the basic rules of the international community,” he said.
The complaint was filed one day after the Organization of American States (OAS) “strongly” condemned the raid by highlighting the inviolability of diplomatic headquarters and their personnel.
Celorio added that the ICJ was also asked to order Ecuador to respect the inviolability of the embassy and guarantee its security.
Bárcena explained, meanwhile, that the “violation” of the Caracas Convention on political asylum, by Ecuador, will be treated separately, although he did not specify the measures. “It is part of another process,” he said.
This Thursday, the German Foreign Ministry reported that it is trying to communicate with Glas, who also has German nationality and is on hunger strike, according to his defense.
Glas, 54, vice president of socialist president Rafael Correa (2007-2017), was hospitalized for 24 hours on Monday for refusing to eat food inside the Guayaquil high-security prison, according to the prison service.
But Correa assured that it was a “suicide” attempt.
The former vice president, who in 2017 recounted in a radio program that his grandfather arrived in Ecuador “fleeing from Nazism,” was sentenced to eight years in prison for two cases of corruption.
Last December he took refuge in the Mexican embassy in the midst of a new judicial investigation for alleged embezzlement in the management of funds for the reconstruction of coastal towns devastated by an earthquake in 2016, which he was in charge of.
Gla served five years of his sentence before being released on parole thanks to a precautionary measure, which obliged him to report periodically to the authority.
The entry Mexico requests suspension of Ecuador from the UN in a lawsuit filed in The Hague was first published in EL NACIONAL.