Former vice president of Ecuador, Jorge Glas. Photo: Mauricio Torres/EFE/file photo.
Political and social organizations from Latin America and Europe demanded that the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, release the former vice president of that country, Jorge Glas, who has been held for six months in a maximum-security prison.
On Saturday, October 5, the International Committee for the Freedom of Jorge Glas held a webinar, bringing together political figures and social movements across Latin America and Europe to demand the issuance of a safe conduct that would allow Glas to leave Ecuador and go to Mexico, a country that has granted him political asylum.
“Every day we hope that Jorge Glas survives, he is subjected to torture and inhumane conditions,” said former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa during his participation in the event. “In Ecuador, there is no rule of law now.”
The coordinator of the International Committee for the Liberation of Jorge Glas, Sacha Llorenti, decried that “the abduction of the former vice president can only be compared in this century to what happened to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Julian Assange. He is a political hostage.”
Irene León, Ecuadorian sociologist and member of the Network of Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity (REDH), highlighted that “the persecution against Glas has persisted since 2017, the year that marked the beginning of lawfare in Ecuador, a large-scale operation aimed at handicapping the Citizen Revolution.”
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Glas’ lawyer Aitor Martínez stressed that his client’s case is one of the most paradigmatic examples of lawfare in Latin America. He added that the former vice president “has been suffering a ruthless persecution for years, with the weaponization of several baseless cases that have been interconnected in order to keep him in prison.”
The event concluded with the participation of Glas’ mother, Norma Espinel, who emphasized, “My son is innocent. Seven years of suffering … he is being killed. He needs his home.”
Earlier, on Friday, the International Committee requested the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to expand the precautionary measures in favor of the former vice president.
On April 5, Ecuadorian security forces violated the immunity of the Mexican embassy in Quito, where Glas had been residing as a political asylum-seeker since December 2023, and arrested him and transferred him to the maximum-security prison La Roca, in the city of Guayaquil, by order of President Noboa. Glas has been incarcerated in the prison since then.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/SC/DZ
