Ecuador's first-ever indigenous MP, Mr Miguel Lluco, who was travelling to Dublin as a speaker during Latin America Week, has been detained at London's Heathrow Airport and sent back on the next flight.
The Irish Labour Party's spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr Michael D. Higgins and Ms Patricia McKenna, the Green MEP, have expressed concern for his welfare to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen. Mr Lluco was to have addressed the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs tomorrow.
Mr Aidan Cahill, co-ordinator of the Latin America Solidarity Centre (LASC), and organiser of the Latin America Week festival, said the legal rights of Mr Lluco "appear to have been infringed". A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said, however, that it was "highly unlikely" there were any political overtones to the incident.
Mr Cahill said Mr Lluco had been put on a flight to Miami. If Mr Lluco was "in a cell in Miami he is in trouble". An organiser of an indigenous uprising in Ecuador two years ago, Mr Lluco had previously been refused entry to the US.
Mr Lluco was on an American Airlines flight. After his flight from Miami had taken off it was discovered his papers were not in order, said a statement by LASC. When he arrived in Heathrow he was forcibly prevented from entering Immigration, a routine operation, to catch his flight to Dublin. He did not have a transit visa and "was forced on to the next flight to Miami", said Mr Cahill.