Belgium grants asylum to former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in Brussels in September 2020. AP - Francisco Seco
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Belgium has granted refugee status to former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (2007-2017), sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption in his country.
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It was the former Ecuadorian head of state who himself announced the news to AFP on Friday, confirming information from the EFE agency.
Rafael Correa had been sentenced to eight years in prison in absentia for corruption in his country, so he will finally find refuge in Belgium
A certificate from the Belgian General Commissioner for Refugees and Stateless Persons, dated April 15 and consulted by AFP, grants the former president (2007-2017) refugee status "
within the meaning of the Geneva Convention
(... )
and its additional protocol
”.
“
It's a relief.
When they give you this protection, it shows that you are being persecuted ,”
Rafael Correa
told
AFP by telephone.
Claiming that he was the subject of "political and judicial persecution" in Ecuador, the ex-president had applied for asylum at the end of 2018 in Belgium, his wife's country of origin, where he has lived since the end of his mandate in 2017.
Sentenced in September 2020
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 process of extradition, as it corresponds to the law, of Rafael Vicente Correa
", after a conviction in absentia handed down in 2020.
Rafael Correa was sentenced
in abstentia
in September 2020 to eight years in prison for corruption.
The justice considered that Mr. Correa and several of his former collaborators had 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.
This conviction had annihilated his hopes of returning to politics, the Constitution prohibiting for life to appear before voters in cases of corruption.
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.
Rafael Correa is also being prosecuted in Colombia for the short-lived kidnapping of an opponent there in 2012.
(
With
AFP)
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