Attorney General threatens to prosecute judiciary council members who vote for her suspension

Ecuador Attorney General Diana Salazar says she will not only ignore a call for her suspension by Ecuador’s Council of the Judiciary but will prosecute council members who support it.

Attorney General Diana Salazar

According to the Council’s discipline subcommittee, Salazar should be suspended without pay for three months while charges of plagiarism of her university thesis are investigated. The subcommittee’s recommendation was sent to the full council Monday night, but no action was taken due to lack of a quorum.

President of the Council Wilman Terán did not say if we will make a second attempt to address the subcommittee report.

“The plagiarism allegation against me was made by the wife of a man sentenced to prison for sexual assault,” Salazar said in an interview with television station Ecuavisa. “My office will bring the full force of the law to bear if necessary for the crime of usurpation of government functions, influence peddling and interference in the legal process.”

The man serving the prison sentence that Salazar referred to is former national ombudsman Freddy Carrión.

Salazar added that there is no merit to the claim she plagiarized 40% of her graduate thesis. “This is not the first attack against me. Like the others, it is an illegal political action with no basis in law and I will not tolerate it.”

According to two prosecutors in Salazar’s office who asked to remain unnamed, the effort to suspend her is part of the Correista effort to gain control over the country’s legal system.

In a Monday night statement, President of the National Court of Justice Iván Saquicela, defended Salazar. He called for “respect for the institutionality of judicial function” and questioned the Judicial Council’s authority to remove the attorney general.