QUITO, Ecuador (AP) — Mexico’s government cut diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police broke into the Mexican embassy to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice president, an extraordinary use of force that shocked and confused regional leaders and diplomats.

Ecuadorian police broke through the exterior doors of the embassy in the capital Quito late Friday to arrest Jorge Glas, who had been living there since December. Glas applied for political asylum at the embassy after being indicted on corruption charges.

The raid prompted Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to announce the severance of diplomatic ties with Ecuador on Friday evening, while his government’s foreign minister said the move would be challenged at the World Court in The Hague.

“This is not possible. It cannot be. This is crazy,” Roberto Canseco, head of the Mexican consular department in Quito, told local press as he stood outside the embassy immediately after the raid. “I’m very worried, because they could kill him. There’s no basis for that. That’s completely outside the norm.”

On Saturday, Glas was taken by the attorney general’s office in Quito to the port city of Guayaquil, where he remains detained in a maximum security prison. People gathered outside the prosecutor’s office chanted “strength” as he drove away with a convoy of police and military vehicles.

Glas’s lawyer, Sonia Vera, told the Associated Press that officers broke into his room and he resisted when they tried to put his hands behind his back. She said the officers then “threw him to the ground, kicked him in the head, spine, legs and hands” and when he “couldn’t walk anymore, they dragged him out.”

Vera said the defense was not allowed to speak to Glas while he was in the prosecutor’s office and is now working on filing a habeas corpus petition.

Authorities are investigating Glas for alleged irregularities in leading reconstruction efforts after a powerful earthquake in 2016 that killed hundreds of people. In other cases he was convicted of bribery and corruption.

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld told reporters on Saturday that the decision to enter the embassy was made by President Daniel Noboa after considering Glas’s “imminent flight risk” and exhausting all options for diplomatic dialogue with Mexico .

Mexico granted Glas asylum just hours before the raid. Sommerfeld said: “It is not legal to grant asylum to people who have been convicted of common crimes and convicted by competent courts.”

Alicia Bárcena, Mexico’s foreign minister, posted on the social media platform X on Friday that several diplomats were injured in the break-in, which she said violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Sommerfeld did not address the injury claims.

According to the Treaty of Vienna, diplomatic premises are considered foreign soil and are “inviolable”. Law enforcement authorities of the host country are not permitted entry without the permission of the ambassador. People seeking asylum have been living in embassies around the world for days or years, including in Ecuador’s London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was housed for seven years because British police could not arrest him.

REGIONAL CRITICISM

The break-in was condemned by presidents, diplomats and a regional body on Saturday.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said: “The United States condemns any violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and takes very seriously host countries’ obligations under international law to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions.” He called on both countries to uphold their to resolve differences.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro denounced the raid in a letter

The Organization of American States, in a statement, reminded its members, which include Ecuador and Mexico, of their “commitment” not to “rely on norms of domestic law to justify non-compliance with their international obligations.”

Bárcena said Friday that Mexico would take the case to the International Court of Justice “to denounce Ecuador’s responsibility for violations of international law.” She also remembered Mexican diplomats.

The president of Ecuador is facing re-election next year

Noboa became Ecuador’s president last year as the country battled unprecedented crime linked to drug trafficking. In January, he declared the country in an “internal armed conflict” and designated 20 drug trafficking gangs as terrorist groups that the military had the right to “neutralize” under international humanitarian law.

Will Freeman, a fellow in Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the decision to send police officers to the Mexican embassy raises concerns about the steps Noboa is willing to take to get re-elected. His term ends in 2025, as he was first elected to finish the term of former President Guillermo Lasso.

“I really hope that Noboa stops turning towards Bukele,” Freeman said, referring to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, whose tough-on-crime policies have been heavily criticized by human rights organizations. “That is, he respects the rule of law less in order to increase his popularity before the elections.”

Freeman added that the question of whether Glass was abusing diplomatic protection was a “separate question” from the decision to send police to the embassy.

“We see a similar pattern in Latin America, where politicians abuse embassies and foreign jurisdictions, not to avoid prosecution, but to avoid responsibility,” he said.

The Mexican embassy in Quito remained under heavy police guard after the raid – the boiling point of recent tensions between Mexico and Ecuador.

Vera, Glas’s lawyer, said she feared “something could happen” to him while in custody, given the record of the country’s detention centers, where hundreds of people have died in violent unrest in recent years. Those killed in custody include some suspects involved in the assassination of a presidential candidate last year.

“In Ecuador, a prison sentence is practically a death sentence,” Vera said. “We assume that the international political and legal person responsible for the life of Jorge Glas is President Daniel Noboa Azín.”

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Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City. Associated Press writers Gonzalo Solano in Quito and Megan Janetsky in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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