Belgium grants asylum to former Equatorial President Rafael Correa
Rafael Correa should be able to take refuge in his wife’s country of origin. The former Ecuadorian president, sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption in his country, has obtained refugee status in Belgium, he announced on Friday April 22, shortly after Quito launched a request for extradition.
Rafael Correa reported to Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Belgium, where he has lived since the end of his mandate, i.e. since 2017, had granted him asylum, confirming information from the Spanish agency EFE. A certificate from the Belgian General Commissioner for Refugees and Stateless Persons, dated April 15, grants the former president (2007-2017) refugee status “within the meaning of the Geneva Convention (…) and its additional protocol”.
For his part, the president of the Ecuadorian National Court of Justice, Ivan Saquicela, announced on Friday that he had signed the day before “the order initiating the extradition process, as it corresponds to the law, of Rafael Vicente Correa”. The next step is “that at the diplomatic level the necessary and indispensable measures be taken so that the extradition takes place” from Belgium, he explained in an interview with the Teleamazonas television channel.
Targeted by other lawsuits
Rafael Correa was sentenced in absentia in September 2020 to eight years in prison for corruption, imprescriptible crimes such as embezzlement, extortion and illicit enrichment.
This conviction had dashed his hopes of returning to politics, the Constitution prohibiting for life to appear before voters in cases of corruption. Justice revealed that Mr. Correa and several of his former collaborators received bribes in exchange for contracts with various companies. Among the firms suspected was the Brazilian construction group Odebrecht, at the heart of numerous corruption trials in Latin America.
The former president has always claimed his innocence and denounces a plot fomented by his rival, his former vice-president and successor to the presidency, Lenin Moreno. He had formally requested asylum in Belgium at the end of 2018. “We have a firm sentence. There is the agreement with Belgium and the international agreements, plus the law on extradition, which does not require strict law. There is no value judgment here”Saquicela said.
Rafael Correa reacted to this announcement on his Twitter account by saying of the head of the National Court of Justice that he was the ” clown “ and the “puppet” of the government. Mr. Correa is also being prosecuted in Colombia for the short-lived kidnapping of an opponent in that country in 2012.