[JURIST] Ecuador's election court [official website, in Spanish] announced Wednesday that a two-year suspension from politics for former Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez, [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] had formally come to an end Sunday, leaving him free to run for office again. Gutierrez was suspended from politics and barred from running in the country's 2006 elections because he declined to report campaign donations in his successful run for presidency in 2002. Gutierrez insisted Tuesday that his suspension had been unwarranted and that he was considering running for another term. AP has more.

After Gutierrez dissolved Ecuador's Supreme Court in 2005, the legislature removed [JURIST reports] him as president and replaced him with Vice-President Alfredo Palacio [official profile, in Spanish]. After seeking political asylum in Brazil and Colombia, Gutierrez returned to Ecuador, where he was initially arrested as posing a threat to national security.