A.1. Regarding personal liberty 58. The Commission argued that the legal exception required to infringe the right to personal liberty pursuant to Article 7(2) of the Convention must necessarily be accompanied by the principle of the prior definition of the criminal offense that obliges the States to establish, as specifically as possible and “beforehand,” the “causes” and “conditions” for the deprivation of physical liberty. Accordingly, any requirement established in domestic law that is not met when depriving a person of liberty will mean that this deprivation of liberty is illegal. Regarding Article7(3), the Commission indicated that any arrest must be carried out not only in keeping with the provisions of domestic law, but must also be proportionate. In this specific case, it considered that the regulation which granted the authority used by the police to make the arrests did not include specific references or objective parameters or reasons that could potentially have justified the suspicion that resulted in the arrests of Mr. Fernández Prieto and Mr. Tumbeiro, and did not require the police authorities to be accountable to their superior officers, in writing, in relation to the reasons for the arrests. This meant that Mr. Fernández Prieto was arrested merely because of his “suspicious behavior,” and Mr. Tumbeiro owing to his “nervousness,” his attire, and the fact that he had indicated that he was in the area to purchase electronic devices when such produces were not sold there. The absence of objective evidence for carrying out the arrests – which were not mentioned in the arrest reports – the questioning and search, and the fact that the law did not provide safeguards against this type of action, did not meet the standard of legality and non-arbitrariness. 59. The representatives argued that, according to the law at the time, the police did not have the authority to arrest Mr. Fernández Prieto. They indicated that, if the existence of such authority was accepted, then the law was contrary to the American Convention because it was “extremely vague and unpredictable, and left a broad margin of discretion to law enforcement personnel, which was exacerbated in contexts of arbitrary conduct and disproportionate use of force by the police.” They argued that the “suspicious behavior” cited by the police did not fall within any of the legally established reasons for arrest, or the exceptional reason that permitted an arrest to be made without a court order (it was not covered by the notion of flagrante delicto, or strong indications or prima facie evidence of guilt). They added that there was no element that would allow the existence and reasonableness of “suspicious behavior” to be assessed. In the case of Mr. Tumbeiro, they indicated that the reasons for his arrest were not included in the law in force at the time. Furthermore, they argued that none of the circumstances for which he was arrested (the fact that the presumed victim was nervous when being questioned, the way he was dressed, or that he was in the neighborhood on an urgent mission) could be considered comparable to the “strong indications of guilt” indicated in the Criminal Procedural Code. A.2. Regarding protection of honor and dignity 60. The Commission argued that the right to privacy was one of the rights at issue in the case of the searches. The Commission referred to the standard developed by the European Court of Human Rights that interference with this right must meet the test of proportionality. In this case, the Commission considered that the police had interfered disproportionately in the private life of the presumed victims. First, in the case of Mr. Fernández Prieto, there was no law that authorized the search of cars or individuals in situations such as that of the presumed victim, because article 4 of the Code of Criminal Procedures permitted arrests for reasons that offered broad discretionality in its interpretation. In the case of Mr. Tumbeiro, the law that authorized the search – namely, article 230 of the National Criminal Procedural Code provided broad discretionality to the police and failed to establish clear limits to its application. The Commission also argued that the State had not proved that the measure was appropriate, necessary and proportionate, considering that there was no sign of a criminal act 20