The lawyer of former Vice President Jorge Glas, Karen Gómez, submitted an appeal on July 20, 2024, against the first-instance ruling in which Judge Patricio Vidal denied the request for corrective habeas corpus in favor of her client.
Glas has been incarcerated since April 6, 2024, in the maximum-security prison La Roca in Guayaquil, where he was transferred from Quito after the police removed him from the Mexican Embassy. The former second-in-command has two final sentences in the Odebrecht and Bribes 2012-2016 cases, as well as a preventive detention order in the Manabí Reconstruction case.
Glas’s legal representative had requested that he be allowed to serve house arrest at his mother’s home with the appropriate police protection, so he could receive medical attention to safeguard his physical and mental health from the doctors who have treated him for several years. The judge did not accept this request.
In her statement, lawyer Gómez argues that the contested ruling lacks clear motivation, violates Glas’s right to effective protection, and suffers from inconsistencies and incoherence.
She adds that the information from the Ministry of Health report, which stated that Glas had received 79 medical attentions at La Roca, was never contrasted.
“The contested ruling also references the communication through which the director of La Roca authorized the entry of personnel from the Ministry of Public Health and Technical Report No. 178-B-DNAIS-2024, whereby the Ministry of Health indicated that from April 6 to July 2, 2024, former Vice President Jorge Glas would have received a total of 79 medical service attentions. However, in the contested ruling, it was not even analyzed whether the alleged medical attentions were those needed by Jorge Glas to address the ankylosing spondylitis that afflicts him and his serious psychological condition due to the risk of suicide. Out of the supposed 79 health services, Jorge Glas only received two psychiatric consultations. In other words, out of 79 health services, a patient who already attempted suicide on April 8, 2024, received only two psychiatric attentions in a span of three months,” the document argues.
The appeal also mentions that reports prepared by the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture from the Ombudsman’s Office and the correísta assembly member Sofía Espín, as well as various medical specialists who visited Glas, were not taken into account.
A date has not yet been set for an appellate court to review and resolve this appeal. (I)