QUITO (AP) – International leaders have condemned Ecuador after police in the country’s capital broke into the Mexican Embassy to arrest a former vice president who had been granted political asylum.
The raid on Friday night prompted Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to break off diplomatic relations with Ecuador, while his government’s foreign relations secretary said the move will be challenged at the World Court in The Hague.
Police broke through the external doors of the embassy in Quito to arrest Jorge Glas, who had been residing there since December. He had sought asylum after being indicted on corruption charges and it had been granted hours earlier. The break-in was widely condemned.
The Organization of American States in a statement reminded its members, which include Ecuador and Mexico, of their obligation not to “invoke norms of domestic law to justify non-compliance with their international obligations”.
The Spanish foreign ministry, in a statement yesterday said that “the entry by force into the Embassy of Mexico in Quito constitutes a violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. We call for respect for international law and harmony between Mexico and Ecuador, brotherly countries to Spain and members of the Ibero-American community”.
United States (US) State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that “the US condemns any violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and takes very seriously the obligation of host countries under international law to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions”.
He called on both countries to resolve their difference. Honduran President Xiomara Castro, writing on X, characterised the raid as “an intolerable act for the international community” and a “violation of the sovereignty of the Mexican State and international law” because “it ignores the historical and fundamental right to asylum”.
Diplomatic premises are considered foreign soil and “inviolable” under the Vienna treaties and host country law enforcement agencies are not allowed to enter without the permission of the ambassador. People seeking asylum have lived anywhere from days to years at embassies around the world.
Mexico’s secretary of foreign relations Alicia Bárcena on Friday posted on X that a number of diplomats suffered injuries during the break-in.
