‘You Don’t Put a Person in a Piss House for a Post That Hurt Your Feelings’

Attorney Michael Peyrefitte is calling the weekend arrest of UDP’s former chairman Alberto August politically motivated and legally baseless. According to Peyrefitte, six armed officers arrived at August’s home Saturday with a search warrant. August was detained for 28 hours over a social media post labelled as “mocking” the Minister of Home Affairs and Enterprise Oscar Mira.

“ If you feel offended by that or you feel like somebody’s putting words into your mouth, take them to civil court and sue them for defamation or something to that effect. You don’t send six policemen and threaten the man’s family,” Peyrefitte said.

He said that cybercrime laws were never intended to shield public officials from satire and criticism.

“It was not a question,” Peyrefitte added. “They arrested him on Saturday so they could legally have him for 48 hours to Monday, then charge him, then have him legally before the magistrate on Tuesday morning so that they would be within their time period as to when they could have a person detained.”

“You don’t put a person in a piss-house for a post… The fact is that you cannot just deprive a person of those 28 hours based on a post that hurt your feelings,” he added.

Peyrefitte called on Prime Minister John Briceño to remove Mira as minister of home affairs, saying, “Anybody who is minister of any of the security services in this country, you can’t be a person who is sensitive… You can’t be a person who is soft and thin-skinned because you have too much constitutional power.”

Meanwhile, Assistant Superintendent of Police Stacy Smith declined to address the circumstances of the arrest in this afternoon’s police press brief, saying the matter was now before the courts.

“It is for the court to decide whether the circumstances that form the basis of the charge meets the threshold,” Smith said.

August said the experience was psychologically taxing but would not silence him.

Peyrefitte said August’s electronics remain in police custody.