A former vice president of Ecuador is reported to have attempted suicide after being dragged by armed police from the Mexican embassy in Quito in a breach of diplomatic protocol.

Jorge Glas, who was evading potential pre-trial detention on corruption charges, was rushed unconscious from his jail cell to hospital on Monday after an apparent overdose of sedatives and painkillers.

He had been detained early on Saturday in the highly unusual raid by Ecuadorian authorities on the embassy, just hours after Mexico’s president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had granted Mr Glas, 54, asylum.

Police stormed the building, climbing over its perimeter walls and even manhandling the acting ambassador, as they searched for Mr Glas. He had served as vice president from 2013 to 2018, including under Rafael Correa, the brash Leftist who gave asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange while relentlessly persecuting critical journalists at home.

The raid, a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention, achieved the impossible in uniting squabbling Latin American leaders, from Argentina’s Javier Milei on the Right to Colombia’s Gustavo Petro on the Left, in condemnation.

It also prompted veiled criticism from Washington. “The United States takes very seriously the obligation of host countries under international law to respect diplomatic missions,” said Brian Nichols, assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere.

Yet Ecuador’s president Daniel Noboa was unrepentant. “My obligation is to comply with the rulings of the justice system, and we could not allow sentenced criminals involved in very serious crimes to be given asylum,” he said on Monday.

The 36-year-old centrist leader, heir to a banana empire and with an MBA from the United States, has seen his approval rating soar to 80 per cent following his crackdown earlier this year on the street gangs terrorising the tiny South American nation.

Glas had already served most of a six-year sentence for allegedly taking bribes from Odebrecht, the disgraced Brazilian construction company implicated in numerous high-level graft cases across Latin America.

But he was wanted for questioning in a separate corruption scandal and had sought refuge in the Mexican embassy last December.