Mexico has suspended diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police forcibly broke into the country’s embassy in Quito to detain former Ecuadorian vice-president Jorge Glas, deepening a diplomatic rift between the two countries.
Glas, convicted twice for corruption, had been holed up in the embassy in Quito since seeking political asylum in December, arguing he was being persecuted by the attorney general’s office.
Police forcefully entered Mexico’s embassy before making the arrest, the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, posted on X.
“Ecuador is a sovereign nation and we are not going to allow any criminal to stay free,” Ecuador’s presidency wrote in a statement on Friday night.
López Obrador fired back, calling Glas’s detention an “authoritarian act” and “a flagrant violation of international law and the sovereignty of Mexico”. He said he had instructed Mexico’s foreign minister to suspend diplomatic ties with Ecuador.
Alicia Bárcena, Mexico’s secretary of foreign relations, added that a number of diplomats suffered injuries in the incident and said it violated the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.
“This is not possible, it cannot be, this is crazy,” said Roberto Canseco, head of the Mexican consular section outside the embassy in Quito.
Asked about the situation of former vice-president Glas and if he was apprehended by public forces, he said: “I understand that yes.”
“I am very worried because they could kill him,” he said. “There is no basis to do this, this is totally outside the norm.”
Ecuador’s foreign ministry and Ecuador’s ministry of the interior did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press news agency.
The Mexican embassy in Quito remained under heavy police guard late on Friday.
A day earlier, tensions between the two countries escalated after López Obrador made statements that Ecuador considered “very unfortunate” about the last elections, which the Ecuadorian president, Daniel Noboa, won.
In reaction, the Ecuadorian government declared the Mexican ambassador persona non grata.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report