(With information from EFE).- The National Court of Justice in Ecuador formally requested this Friday the extradition of former President Rafael Correa, who was sentenced in 2020 to eight years in prison for bribery and before the judiciary in Belgium, a country on the run is has just granted him the condition of political asylum with refugee status.
“Yesterday I already signed the verdict opening the extradition proceedings of the former President of the Republic of Ecuador, Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado,” the court’s president, Iván Saquicela, told local TV station Teleamazonen.
Ten High Court judges upheld the decision, which is a further step towards the former president’s 8-year prison sentence and 25-year political disqualification (he was unable to run in the 2021 election), to which he was sentenced in a final judgment issued by the Ecuadorian judiciary.
Correa was found guilty of aggravated bribery for receiving improper contributions to fund the Alianza País government movement in exchange for the award of millionaire contracts, including Brazilian Odebrecht
It is now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador that must handle the judicial claim before the Belgian government under the extradition treaty ratified with that country in 1887, as well as subsequent laws and international treaties.
The extradition request, which has taken almost two years to be issued and which Saquicela says has been delayed due to procedural steps, could remain dead letter after it was revealed that Belgium had granted political asylum to Correa, who denies the allegations and claims he has become the object of political persecution.
Correa was convicted of aggravated bribery in the “Bribes 2012-2016” case, a conspiracy in which improper donations for the irregular funding of the Alianza País government movement were accepted at the Presidential Palace of Carondelet in exchange for awarding millionaire contracts from the government to companies, including the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
Twenty people have been convicted in the same corruption case, including former high-ranking officials such as former Vice President Jorge Glas, who was recently released thanks to a controversial habeas corpus, while others are in prison and some have fled, mainly to Mexico.
After the verdict in the case, Ecuador must recover $14.7 million for material and non-material damages.
Correa, who ruled Ecuador from 2007 to 2017, settled in Belgium shortly after his mandate ended and has not returned to the country since early 2018, when investigations were launched against him, and in two of them they issued preventive detention orders that have not been executed.
The Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry assured that it was not aware of Belgium’s “alleged asylum” for Correa and assumes that it will forward the extradition request to the Belgian authorities.
Correa, 59 and a former leader of the so-called Latin American left of the 21st century, has always boasted that Interpol and Belgium have until now ruled out cooperating with orders from his country’s judiciary.
“Another piece of paper, unfortunately not only for this one but for the entire justice system and the government of which he is a puppet,” Correa wrote on Twitter after learning of Saquicela’s decision, whom he called a “rogue”. and “make an ass of yourself”.
For Correa, being granted political asylum is evidence of the political persecution he has denounced since the end of his prison term and the beginning of the investigation against him.
In an April 15 resolution to which Efe had access, Belgium’s Commissioner-General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS) confirmed that it had granted Correa refugee status in that country, from which his wife Anne Malherbe hails.
Correa’s lawyer, Christophe Marchand, said the asylum application was made after the trial for the kidnapping of political opponent Fernando Balda began in Ecuador in 2018. Since then, the former president has been a fugitive from his country’s justice system.
In a statement, Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry assured that it knows nothing about the “alleged asylum” Belgium has granted Correa and expects to forward the extradition request to Belgian authorities once it is transmitted by the national court of justice.
The trial of Juan Orlando Hernández began this Friday with the official reading of the charges against him for drug trafficking and possession of weapons
On the other hand, the US initiated formal drug trafficking proceedings against former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández. The trial began this Friday with the official reading of the charges against him for drug trafficking and possession of weapons, which the defendant heard in a video conference from the federal prison where he is being held in New York.
Hernández, who arrived in the Big Apple from Tegucigalpa at 12:15 am, was not wearing the uniform of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn County, where he is being held pending his trial.
The former president (2014-2022), who appeared to be calm, wore a blue quilted coat and white shirt during the short hearing, which was broadcast in closed circuit for journalists (and some Honduran citizens who were allowed to enter the court) in Manhattan where the trial against him is taking place.
Through the interpreter, the former President heard from Judge Stewart D. Aaron the US government’s charges against him, which set the next hearing for May 10.
That day is the hearing before Judge Kevin Castel, who will preside over his case, as he did with former Congressman Antonio Tony Hernández, the former president’s brother, who is serving a life sentence in the US for drug trafficking.
When asked by the judge, he limited himself to saying that he was aware of the allegations against him
Hernández, 53, was charged with three felonies committed between 2004 and 2022, according to federal prosecutors: conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and heavy weapons, and conspiracy to possess those machine guns and weapons. These last two crimes can earn a life sentence.
Before the judge’s question, he limited himself to saying that he was aware of the allegations against him.
Attorney Colón told Judge Aaron that Hernández “for now” accepts the detention but “reserves the right to seek bail.”
US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said Hernandez ruled Honduras as a “drug state”.
Hernández, who was identified as “CC-4” in a pre-indictment document from the Manhattan Attorney’s Office without ever giving his name and tying him to drug trafficking, has reiterated his innocence on multiple occasions.
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