Aeromexico will suspend service to Quito this summer and autumn, in another sign of the growing diplomatic row between Mexico and Ecuador over Ecuador’s former Vice President Jorge Glas.
Aeromexico Suspends Service To Quito, Ecuador (July – December 2024)
From July 1, 2024 through December 18, 2024, Aeromexico will suspend its daily service between Benito Juárez International Airport (MEX) in Mexico City and Mariscal Sucre International Airport (UIO) in Quito. The problem is not a lack of demand or fears over safety, but a growing dispute between Mexico and Ecuador over a controversial politician and the principle of international norms relating to diplomatic missions abroad.
In late 2017, Ecuador’s former Vice President Jorge Glas was sentenced to six years in prison by a Criminal Tribunal of the National Court of Justice. Glas was found guilty of receiving $13.5 million in bribes in what became known as the Odebrecht scandal.
In 2022, Glas was granted habeas corpus (the literal meaning of habeas corpus is “you should have the body” which means that a judge or court should…and must…have the person who is being detained brought forward so that the legality of that person’s detention can be examined).
While out of prison, Glas sought political asylum in the Mexican embassy in Quito in December 2023. Mexico granted it. But on April 5, 2024, Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican embassy in Quito and arrested Glas.
Mexico has accused Ecuador of violating international law by breaching the embassy, while Ecuador accuses the North American country of illegally granting asylum to Glas, who has been convicted twice of corruption and is facing fresh charges.
Mexico and Ecuador broke diplomatic relations over the incident, and both have since stopped processing visas, passports and other documents in the other nation.
Nicaragua has also suspended diplomatic relations with Ecuador in solidarity with Mexico.
Glas remains in custody.
CONCLUSION
Aeromexico will suspend service between MEX and UIO for a period of 5.5 months, starting July 1st. Without the processing of visas and other travel documents, travel between the two countries now involves an extra flight connection and consular services via third countries. Rather than sovereign outposts, embassies and consulates are located on foreign soil and remain under the host country’s sovereignty, although international norms typically limit the sort of blatant incursion observed in the Glas case. Aeromexico is now caught in the middle.
Quito is about the most boring place on Earth, so I’d say the good people of MEX are lucky.
From AP :”Glas was previously convicted on bribery and corruption charges in two separate cases, one of which was tied to the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht and earned him a six-year prison sentence.
He was later sentenced to eight years for his role in a scheme that collected bribes for public procurement.
In 2022, Judge Emerson Curipallo in a controversial ruling ordered that Glas be freed from prison. Curipallo is now in custody while authorities investigate his alleged role in what prosecutors say was a bribery scheme for favorable rulings for a drug lord and his relatives.”
Nothing about the case matters. Invading an embassy is an act of war. Ecuador is lucky that this was Mexicos only reaction. They certainly have the allies & political pull to do much worse.
I tend to agree!