Ecuadorian justice ordered Rafael Correa's pre-trial detention in a corruption case

Ecuadorian justice ordered Friday the pre-trial detention of former president Rafael Correa, for his alleged involvement in a case of bribes orchestrated for the award of contracts with the state.

National Judge Daniella Camacho took the precautionary measure in acceding to the request of the Prosecutor General, Diana Salazar, and considered that the prison would be "legal, constitutional and conventional" and therefore "non arbitrary".

Salazar investigates a conspiracy called "Bribes 2012-2016", in which four other former collaborators of Correa's mandate (2007-2017) would be involved, to whom he also applied the same precautionary measure.

The prosecutor's office suspects that the investigation illuminates about a dozen elements of conviction that suggest the commission of crimes of corruption, illicit badociation and trafficking in influence in the so-called irregular funding of the political movement Alianza País (AP) who led the former governor until 2017.

In the Correa case, Camacho found that the pre-trial detention was appropriate because of the impossibility of taking other appropriate measures to ensure his appearance before the Court. since he's been living in Belgium since he left power more than two years ago. He also noted that the former president had received a warrant for violating the precautionary measures in the case of attempted kidnapping in Colombia of opposition politician Fernando Balda.

To date, Correa (who has more than a dozen open cases) has never been convicted and refuses to return to the country because he believes that he is the victim of political persecution on the part of his successor, Lenín Moreno, with whom he is enmity.

"Judicial war is the right tactic to eliminate progressive leaders," Correa wrote on his Twitter account to defend against his arrest request.