“The Belgian Ministry of Justice now confirms (…) that it will not proceed with Ecuador’s extradition request”, and “that Belgium will also refuse to cooperate with the “Ecuadorian justice” in the political processes,” law firm Jus Cogens said in a statement.
Belgium granted Mr. Correa refugee status following acknowledging that “the criminal proceedings opened once morest” the former Ecuadorian president “were manifestly contrary to the right to a fair trial”, specifies the statement, posted on Twitter by Mr. Correa.
Political asylum already seemed to be a major obstacle to extradition attempts by the Ecuadorian authorities but, according to the former president’s lawyers, Belgian justice has now buried any possibility of extradition.
The text does not mention any official Belgian communication.
For his part, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Holguín told the press that in his country there was no “persecution by justice, each citizen who is claimed by Ecuadorian justice has been entitled to a due process”.
Mr. Correa, in Belgium since 2017, obtained refugee status on April 15, according to a copy of the certificate issued by the General Commissioner for Refugees and Stateless Persons, to which AFP had access.
The news was made public on April 22, the day Ecuadorian judicial authorities requested the extradition of the former socialist leader, in power between 2007 and 2017.
Mr Correa, 59, was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption for his role in a scheme set up under his government to pay nearly $7.6 million in bribes in exchange for contracts, but he denounces a “political persecution”.
The sentence once morest him was confirmed in 2020, which also deprived him of any elective mandate for life. The former socialist president is also being prosecuted with an arrest warrant for the short-lived kidnapping of an opponent in Colombia in 2012.
