‘Outrage against international law’: Mexico breaks diplomatic ties with Ecuador over embassy raid

Mexico is breaking diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police raided its embassy in Quito to arrest former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who had been seeking asylum there.

Confirming the move in a statement to CNNE, a foreign ministry spokesperson said all Mexican diplomatic staff would leave Ecuador immediately.

Mexico decried the raid as “an outrage against international law,” while the United Nations voiced concern. Under diplomatic norms, embassies are generally considered protected spaces.

A rift between the two Latin American countries had been growing for several days, culminating Friday in Mexico’s decision to grant political asylum to Glas, who served as vice president under leftist ex-President Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017.

Convicted twice on corruption charges, Glas says he is the subject of political persecution and had been sheltering inside the embassy.

But on Friday, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, on his official X account, said he had been informed that “police from Ecuador forcibly entered” the embassy and took Glas – who “was a refugee and processing asylum because of the persecution and harassment he faces.”

Video from the scene showed police officers massing around the embassy, some armed.

A statement released by Ecuador’s government on X also confirmed the arrest.

Glas was “sentenced to imprisonment by the Ecuadorian justice system,” the statement from Ecuador’s government read, and was “arrested tonight and placed under the orders of the competent authorities.” He had been granted diplomatic asylum “contrary to the conventional legal framework,” the government said.

Glas has since been transferred to a maximum-security prison in Guayaquil known as La Roca, the national prisons agency SNAI announced Saturday.

He had most recently been accused by Ecuadorian authorities of embezzling government funds meant to help rebuild after a devastating 2016 earthquake.

“What you have just seen is an outrage against international law and the inviolability of the Mexican embassy in Ecuador,” Roberto Canseco, head of chancellery and policy affairs of the Mexican embassy, told a reporter from CNNE, calling Glas’s arrest “totally unacceptable.”

“It is barbarism,” Canseco added. “It is impossible for them to violate the diplomatic premises as they have done.”