medellin colombia – Ecuador’s Foreign Minister announced Wednesday morning that Ecuador’s Ambassador to Colombia, Arturo Felix Wong, has been recalled.
The move comes after Colombian President Gustavo Petro called Ecuador’s jailed former vice president Jorge Glas a “political prisoner” and said he was not being provided enough food.
The spat is the latest in a series of diplomatic conflicts this year between the two neighbors, which have included retaliatory tariffs and accusations over border security.
In an interview with Centro Digital Radio, Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Gabriela Somerfield justified the withdrawal of Ecuador’s ambassador to Colombia as “a protest against Colombia against the terminology used by Petro and its interference in the decisions taken by various departments of the Ecuadorian state.”
This announcement follows a number of recent inflammatory comments about Glas from Petro. “It is undeniable that Jorge Glas is a political prisoner,” the president said on Monday.
Glas has been convicted several times on corruption-related charges, but his supporters, including Petro, accuse Ecuador’s right-wing government of persecuting him for his links to the progressive civil revolutionary movement.
“Allowing someone to die of hunger while under government protection is a crime against humanity,” Petro said Tuesday.
Glas is currently serving an eight-year sentence for bribery and criminal association and 13 years for embezzlement at El Encuentro prison. The prison is modeled after Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s infamous prison system.
He was first convicted in 2017 for his involvement in the Odebrecht scandal, one of the largest corruption cases in recent Latin American history, after it was revealed that he had accepted millions of dollars in bribes from Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht.
Afterwards, he was sentenced to an additional sentence and was temporarily released in 2022, but was imprisoned again shortly after. Later that year, he was released again and applied for asylum at the Mexican embassy, claiming political persecution. But two years ago he was arrested in a controversial police raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito, which led to the severance of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Now Ecuador also faces frosty relations with neighboring Colombia. On February 1, Quito imposed a 30% tariff on Bogota, which was increased to 50% in March. President Daniel Novoa said the levy was a response to Colombia’s failure to cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking.
Colombia imposed a 30% tariff on 73 products imported from Ecuador, including rice and sugar, which was later increased to 50% on more than 185 products.
Further conflict broke out last month when Petro accused Ecuador of bombings across the border between the two countries.
Foreign Secretary Summerfield recalled Ecuador’s ambassador to Colombia on Wednesday and announced that a meeting to address the ongoing trade war between the two countries would be suspended.
Featured image caption: President Gustavo Petro attending a cabinet meeting on October 22, 2025.
Featured image credit: @InfoPresidencia via X.
