By Alexandra Valencia
QUITO (Reuters) -Ecuador’s detained former Vice President Jorge Glas was taken to hospital on Monday after he fell ill at a prison in Guayaquil, prison authorities said, just hours after his lawyers complained they had been unable to contact him.
Glas, already twice convicted of corruption and now facing fresh charges, was arrested on Friday after a raid by police on Mexico’s Quito embassy, where he had been living since December.
In a statement published on X, the SNAI prison agency said Glas had been taken to the naval hospital in Guayaquil around noon local time.
Glas fell ill “after refusing to eat food provided (in the jail) during the last 24 hours,” the statement said.
He was in stable condition, the statement added.
The unusual raid that led to his arrest took a simmering spat between the two countries to a boiling point, causing Mexico to suspend diplomatic relations with Ecuador and drawing criticism from countries around the region and elsewhere.
Ecuador has defended its violation of sovereign Mexican territory at the embassy, arguing the North American country cannot grant Glas asylum if he is facing charges, and that Ecuador had information about an imminent escape plan.
Glas was hospitalized after one of his lawyers, Sonia Vera, published an open letter dated on Sunday to express her “deep worry and alarm” that Glas had be able to speak to his legal team, adding it amounted to “a severe infraction to the fundamental rights of Jorge Glas.”
Vera called for unlimited in-person contact for Glas with his lawyers.
Glas was thrown to the floor and hit in several places during the raid, Vera said at a press conference on Monday.
Leftist Glas, who was vice president from 2013 to 2017, was first sentenced to six years for taking bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht in return for state contracts.
He was convicted again in 2020 of using money from contractors to fund campaigns for President Rafael Correa’s political movement and given an eight-year sentence.
Glas, who served more than four years in prison before being released in 2022, has long alleged the charges are politically motivated, an accusation prosecutors have denied.
He now faces charges of misusing funds collected to aid reconstruction of coastal Manabi province after a devastating 2016 earthquake.
In a letter shared via social media platform X, President Daniel Noboa said he was open to fixing relations with Mexico but insisted that the law must always be respected.
“To the Mexican people, I want to express that I will always be willing to resolve any difference, but justice is not up for negotiation,” he said.
Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena said on Monday the head of Ecuador’s diplomatic mission to her country will not be asked to leave, stressing Mexico wants to calm tensions.
“We’re not going to follow the same recipe,” Barcena said at Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s morning press conference.
(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia in Quito; Additional reporting by Yury Garcia in Guayaquil; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb and Oliver Griffin; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Richard Chang)
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