Latin American governments, including regional heavyweight Brazil, rallied around Mexico on Saturday after its embassy in Ecuador was raided to arrest a controversial politician who had been granted asylum by Mexican authorities.

Demonstrators gather outside the Mexican embassy in Ecuador to ask for the freedom of former Ecuador VP Glas, in Quito.

The late Friday night seizure of Jorge Glas, Ecuador's former vice president who had been convicted twice on graft charges, caused outrage in Mexico City, which suspended relations with Quito.

Glas, 54, who had a preventive arrest warrant out on another corruption case, had been holed up in the embassy in Quito since seeking political asylum in December, a request Mexico had granted earlier on Friday.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blasted the unusual diplomatic incursion and arrest as an "authoritarian" act as well as a breach of international law and Mexico's sovereignty.

Under international law, embassies are considered the sovereign territory of the country they represent.

The government of Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa argued that Mexico's asylum protections were illegal because of Glas' corruption charges.

Sonia Vera, the international lawyer for Glas, said by telephone on Saturday that his team was requesting help on an inter-American level with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as well as with the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly.

Glas, who was vice president under the leftist government of Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017, has complained that he is being persecuted for his political affiliation, which Ecuador's government denies.

Video circulating on social media showed him being taken by police convoy to the airport in Quito, flanked by heavily armed soldiers. He then boarded a plane en route to a jail in Guayaquil, the Andean nation's largest city.

On Saturday, governments across the political spectrum in Latin America - including Brazil and Colombia on the left, and Argentina and Uruguay on the right - sharply criticized the storming of the embassy to arrest Glas.

Photos on social media, including one posted by Cuba's foreign minister, showed what appeared to be the embassy's wall being scaled by armed police or soldiers. Reuters could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the photos.

Brazil's government condemned Ecuador's move as a "clear violation" of international norms prohibiting such a raid on a foreign embassy.

Ecuador's move against the embassy "must be subject to strong repudiation, whatever the justification for its implementation," according to a statement from Brazil's foreign ministry, which stressed Brasilia's solidarity with Mexico.

'GRAVE VIOLATIONS'

In an interview with local broadcaster Milenio on Saturday morning, Mexico's top diplomat, Alicia Barcena, expressed shock at Ecuador's incursion into the country's embassy, located in Quito's financial district, adding that some embassy personnel had been injured in the raid.

She added that Glas had been granted asylum after an exhaustive analysis of the circumstances surrounding the accusations he faces.

The Mexican foreign ministry has announced it will file a complaint with the United Nation's International Court of Justice for "grave violations of international law."

The Washington-based Organization of American States on Saturday issued a call for dialogue to resolve the escalating dispute between the two countries, adding in a statement that a session of the body's permanent council would be convened to discuss the need for "strict compliance with international treaties, including those that guarantee the right to asylum."

Colombian President Gustavo Petro argued in a post on X that Latin America "must keep alive the precepts of international law in the midst of the barbarism that is advancing in the world."

Petro's government noted it will seek human rights legal protections for the now-detained Glas, according to a separate statement.

Ecuadorean authorities had unsuccessfully sought permission from Mexico to enter the embassy and arrest Glas.

In 2017, Glas, was sentenced to six years in prison after being found guilty of taking bribes from Brazilian construction firm Odebrecht in exchange for awarding it government contracts.

He was convicted again in 2020 of using money from contractors to fund campaigns for Correa's political movement and given an eight-year sentence.

Ecuador’s Embassy Storming Prompts Mexico to Break Off Relations

Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with Ecuador after police stormed its embassy in Quito and arrested former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who had sheltered at the mission since December.

Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena announced the “immediate breaking” of ties on Saturday, citing a “flagrant violation” of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The embassy’s Mexican personnel suffered injuries, she said.

Ecuador raided the embassy hours after Mexico granted political asylum to Glas. An arrest warrant for him was pending since the Ecuadorian Prosecutor General’s Office released chat messages suggesting that a drug trafficker bribed a judge to obtain Glas’ early release from a prison sentence for graft.

The dramatic arrest and mutual accusations of breaching diplomatic protocol are inflaming tensions that date back to Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s election last year. Noboa, 36, defeated a candidate backed by former President Rafael Correa, an ally of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Noboa campaigned on a crackdown against violent gangs in Ecuador that security experts have linked to Mexican crime syndicates. He’s seeking to shore up his standing in a referendum on April 21 that will seek tough anti-crime measures and economic reforms, including allowing temporary work contracts and increased international arbitration of contract disputes between companies and the Ecuadorian state.

Noboa is touring the country to campaign for the proposals as polls suggest the economic measures will be a tough sell.

Read more: Cocaine Crackdown Turns Ecuador’s Young Leader Into a Superstar

After the embassy raid, Glas was transferred to a prison in Guayaquil, the Ecuadorian government said Saturday. Mexico earlier criticized the buildup of Ecuadorian police outside the embassy and asked that its sovereignty be respected.

The dispute calls into question diplomatic standards that have been in place since the Vienna Convention in 1963. Ecuador and Mexico are among the 182 countries that have signed the treaty, which forbids host countries from entering the premises of a foreign diplomatic mission without permission. Mexico will bring the matter before the International Court of Justice, Barcena said.

The Ecuadorian government said that Mexico had “granted political asylum contrary to the conventional legal framework,” without going into detail. “Ecuador is a sovereign country and we will not allow any criminal to go unpunished.”

Brazil and Chile condemned the embassy raid in statements, while the Organization of American States said all countries in the region have an obligation to abide by the Vienna Convention.

Correa, who lives in Belgium after avoiding arrest on a graft conviction in 2020, said on X that Noboa has “lost his mind.”

Ecuador had declared Mexico’s ambassador to the country, Raquel Serur Smeke, persona non grata on Thursday. The Ecuadorian foreign ministry said the move was a result of Lopez Obrador’s recent and “very unfortunate” comments on Ecuador’s 2023 election.

Lopez Obrador told reporters that his friend Correa’s preferred candidate would have won if not for the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, whose death turned the tide of public opinion. Some candidates exploited the tragedy for political gain, he said.

In late 2022, AMLO, as the president is known, expressed support for Peru’s former leader Pedro Castillo, who he said was the victim of a “coup,” and granted asylum to his family. That sparked tensions with Peru’s President Dina Boluarte, who took office after Castillo was ousted and arrested for illegally trying to dissolve Congress and rule by decree.

Under the Correa administration, Ecuador famously hosted WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in its London embassy for seven years after he sought asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation he denied.

OAS condemns arrest of Ecuador's ex-VP in Mexican embassy

The former Vice President of Ecuador, Jorge Glas, sits in front of the national flag in his office. 

The Organization of American States (OAS) has criticized the arrest of Ecuador's former vice president Jorge Glas at the Mexican embassy in Quito.

The general secretariat of the OAS "rejects any action that violates or puts at risk the inviolability of the premises of diplomatic missions and reiterates the obligation that all States have not to invoke norms of domestic law to justify non-compliance with their international obligations," the body said in a statement issued on Saturday.

"In this context, it expresses solidarity with those who were victims of the inappropriate actions that affected the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador."

Security forces in Ecuador forced their way into the Mexican embassy in Quito and arrested former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas, prompting Mexico to suspend bilateral ties.

Mexico is breaking off diplomatic relations with Ecuador with immediate effect and will bring a case before the International Court of Justice, Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena said on Friday evening.

Glas, who is wanted for corruption, had been residing for months in Mexico's embassy in the Ecuadorian capital.

The Mexican Foreign Ministry announced earlier Friday it would grant Glas asylum, enraging Ecuador.

Ecuador's presidency said Mexico was violating international agreements, and said that Glas was the subject of an arrest warrant for embezzlement that needed to be acted upon and would not be authorized to leave Ecuador.

Foreign Minister Bárcena accused Mexico of committing a "flagrant and serious violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations" by forcibly entering the Mexican embassy to get Glas.

Glas was vice president of Ecuador during the second term of office of left-wing president Rafael Correa, who left the post in 2017. Correa was convicted in absentia in 2020 as part of a sweeping political corruption investigation and now lives in Belgium.

Glas was already found guilty in late 2017 of accepting bribes in exchange for awarding public contracts to the Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht. He was sentenced to a total of eight years in prison, but was released early two years ago due to the poor security situation in Ecuador's prisons.

For the past several months he has been ensnared in a separate embezzlement case for which an arrest warrant was issued.

Relations between Mexico and Ecuador have soured over the past week.

On Thursday, Ecuador's conservative government under President Daniel Noboa declared the Mexican ambassador persona non grata.

This was prompted by left-wing Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador saying that the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in Ecuador last August had contributed to Noboa's election victory in October.