Former Foreign Minister Javier González-Olaechea affirmed that the Peruvian State must “deny safe conduct” to the former premier. Betssy Chavez “so as not to consolidate what has been a trick” on their part and “a premeditated and continuous attitude of long standing” on the part of the Mexican government.
The former head of Foreign Affairs recalled that although the Caracas Convention on Diplomatic Asylum recognizes that the asylum country – which in this case is Mexico – is the one that qualifies asylum and grants it without the need for justification, that same norm, in its article 3, establishes an exception, “and that is that when someone – in this case Betssy Chávez – is involved in a process as accused by a competent authority before the courts”, the granting of asylum is “illicit.”
“It would be up to the Peruvian State to deny her safe passage so as not to consolidate what has been a trick on the part of Mrs. Chávez, who did not attend the hearings to which she was summoned,” he said, and immediately also questioned the “premeditated attitude of the López Obrador family that has been openly hostile, mistreating constitutional rights and making use and abuse of the Caracas Convention,” he pointed out.
González-Olaechea warned that denying safe passage to Chávez would not have negative consequences for the Peruvian State but rather positive ones “since the first paragraph of the third article is invoked, which clearly establishes that as an accused (asylum) is illicit, it is illegal, against reason,” he stressed.
“The consequences are positive from the point of view of law because what Mexico has done is a use and abuse of public international law and the Caracas Convention, and seeks to mock Peru and in this case remove from justice a person who is clearly involved in an attempted coup d’état under the guise of conspiracy, according to the Penal Code,” he reiterated.
“The political consequence would be positive from the internal point of view because clearly the message would be: ‘we are not going to allow a legal instrument to be used to evade justice with impunity’; and then it constitutes – because there are others who are lining up and could try to do the same with respect to the same attempted coup d’état – in a message that would be: ‘we are not going to encourage, as part of the fight against corruption and as part of the fight against impunity, the return of Peru through asylum,” he continued.
Asked about the possibility of the Peruvian State being sued for non-compliance with the convention before the International Court of Justice, the former chancellor said that “like all trials”, this could last seven or eight years and it is more likely – he continued – that before that is resolved “the extended political family of López Obrador and President (Claudia) Sheinbaum will come to an end and change the political direction of the Mexican government.
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