Three Facebook pages linked to Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed have been removed by Meta, including the Team Mohamed’s page with approximately 540,000 followers, the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) page with about 40,000 followers and Mohamed’s personal Azruddin Mohamed, Leader of the Opposition page with approximately 59,000 followers.
The removals were disclosed yesterday by Mohamed in a statement in which he also accused President Irfaan Ali’s attorney, Selwyn Pieters, of threatening to have his social media page suspended again.
Pieters has denied any involvement in the deactivation of Mohamed’s pages and has challenged the Opposition Leader to publicly produce evidence supporting his claim.
Pieters said any assertion that he caused, requested or was responsible for the page’s deactivation is false.
He noted that Mohamed had previously offered different explanations for the page’s temporary disappearance, including blaming the Guyana Police Force, the People’s Progressive Party and later Meta, which he said had deactivated the page over alleged copyright infringement.
Pieters said Mohamed had also stated that his attorneys contacted Meta and succeeded in having the page restored. “If Mr. Mohamed’s attorneys engaged Meta and had the page restored, they should have the factual basis upon which the page was deactivated,” Pieters said, calling on Mohamed to make the correspondence with Meta public.
Pieters also addressed a separate matter involving a social media post Mohamed published on October 3 concerning a Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit operation and President Ali.
He said he considered the post defamatory and, acting as Ali’s attorney, contacted Mohamed and requested its removal. After Mohamed referred him to his attorney, Pieters said he communicated the request and warned that he would pursue available legal remedies if the post remained.
He said the post was not removed and he subsequently submitted the matter to Meta for consideration under its policies.
Pieters stressed that Meta independently decided what action to take and that he had no power to determine the outcome.He said the action concerning that specific post was entirely separate from the earlier deactivation of the Team Mohamed page.
Pieters also rejected suggestions that his actions were politically motivated, saying he acted in his professional capacity to protect his client’s legal interests. He maintained that freedom of expression and freedom of the press must be protected, but said those rights do not exempt individuals from defamation laws.
Mohamed said efforts were being made to restore the affected platforms and urged supporters to continue using their voices and other social media platforms to speak out.
Until his main pages are restored, he said he would use the Hon. Azruddin Mohamed, Leader of the Opposition page, which he said has approximately 14,000 followers.
Mohamed’s Team Mohamed’s page, which had more than 500,000 followers, became inaccessible following the September arrests of members of his team and the seizure of phones and vehicles belonging to Mohamed.
The arrests and seizures occurred after a police investigation into alleged drone activity near President Ali’s private residence at Leonora.
The Team Mohamed’s page later resurfaced, but the latest statement indicates that the page, along with two other Mohamed-linked pages, is again unavailable.
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