ECUADOR issued a demand for an Interpol red notice to arrest government critic and former foreign minister Ricardo Patino yesterday on grounds of incitement.

A judge from the attorney general’s office announced the preventative detention of Mr Patino who served under former president Raffael Correa.

Interpol rejected a request for a red notice for the arrest of Mr Correa last year as they warned it was incompatible with human rights. 

Ecuador has also launched investigations against attorney Beatriz Benitez who had ruled out preventative detention against Mr Patino.

President Lenin Moreno has faced huge demonstrations against his increasingly authoritarian rule and neoliberal policies. 

Mr Correa branded him “the greatest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history” after the expulsion and arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the country’s London embassy last week.

Mr Patino accused the Ecuadorian president of sacrificing Mr Assange in return for a $4.2 billion (£3.2bn) loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“The arrest of Assange is part of Lenin Moreno’s agreement with the IMF,” he said in an interview earlier this week.

He claimed Mr Moreno had struck a deal with the US on three main issues: to adopt the US position regarding Venezuela, to end South American economic integration and to expel Mr Assange from the Ecuadoran embassy in London in exchange for a “miserable loan from the IMF.” 

Mr Patino has accused Mr Moreno of corruption after WikiLeaks revealed the so-called INA papers which allegedly linked him and his family to a series of illicit offshore accounts.

Protesters warned that the arrest of Mr Assange was used as a “smokescreen” to deflect from government plans to privatise the oil industry.

Protesters say that as a result of the IMF deal and the associated neoliberal reforms, thousands of public-sector employees have been sacked and oil prices have risen.