Head of UN joins condemnation of Ecuador's armed raid on Mexican embassy in Quito

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has added his voice to a torrent of criticism of Ecuador's decision to storm the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest the former vice-president Jorge Glas.

- Tom Phillips

"The secretary general is alarmed at the forced entry of Ecuadorian security forces into the premises of the Mexican embassy," Guterres said through his spokesperson yesterday, adding that violations of the sanctity of diplomatic and consular property "jeopardise the pursuit of normal international relations".

The decision by Ecuador's young president, Daniel Noboa, to order Friday's raid-portrayed as part of his three-month-old "war on crime" has prompted an unusually intense outpouring of outrage from across the political spectrum in Latin America.

Dramatic footage of the police assault showed heavily armed officers scaling the building's outer wall before a senior Mexican diplomat, Roberto Canseco, was wrestled to the ground as Glas was driven away. "This cannot be. This is madness," Canseco was filmed shouting. "I'm worried, because they might kill him," a visibly shaken Canseco added of Glas, who had been living at the Mexican embassy since seeking asylum there late last year.

Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, led the criticism, expressing solidarity with his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The Brazilian foreign ministry said Ecuador's move deserved "vehement repudiation" and was a "clear violation of the pan-American convention on diplomatic asylum and the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations".