(Credit: GANINE COSTA/AFP via Getty Images)
Former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo reiterated his request for asylum in Mexico on Thursday. reported on Twitter That country’s foreign minister is Marcelo Ebrard.
“Ambassador Pablo Monroy informs me that he was able to meet Pedro Castillo from Lima at 1:20 p.m. at the Penitentiary Center. He found him in good health and in the company of his lawyer,” Ebrard wrote at the beginning of his message.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs added, “Castillo approved the asylum request received at the Mexican Embassy this morning (2 am). He also issued a note dated Wednesday that was sent to the embassy headquarters on behalf of the former president.
Ebrard closed his release by saying they had “started consultations with the Peruvian authorities.”
CNN is contacting Castillo’s security and Peruvian authorities to try to get more information about the release by Mexican officials.
In his morning briefing this Thursday, Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that Castillo had called his office on Wednesday to request asylum.
“Then he spoke to the office here, so they would tell me he was going to the embassy, but of course his phone was already tapped, and he was going to request asylum, the embassy for him if they opened the door. I looked for Marcelo Ebrard, gave him the information, told him to speak to the ambassador, to open the door to the embassy. I said. Keeping our tradition,” López Obrador said.
This Thursday, a Peruvian judge ordered Castillo into preliminary detention for 7 days, after an investigation into which the public ministry said the former official was a flight risk.
Castillo’s defense denied the sedition and conspiracy charges against him and rejected the prosecutor’s office’s accusations.
Castillo was arrested this Wednesday after members of Congress approved the presidential vacancy. Hours earlier, the former president attempted to dissolve Congress, which experts, the Constitutional Court and the international community have characterized as a coup attempt.
Jimena de la Quintana contributed to this report
