RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A Facebook executive arrested for refusing to give information about the company's users to law enforcement was released from jail on Wednesday.

Diego Dzodan, Facebook's most senior representative in Latin America, left a jail in Sao Paulo after one night in custody on a warrant issued by a judge in the northeastern state of Sergipe.

The warrant says Dzodan repeatedly failed to comply with a judicial order to cooperate with an investigation into drug trafficking and organized crime. The company had ignored requests to surrender user information from the WhatsApp messaging service, an application bought by Facebook in 2014.

According to police, investigators first contacted the company four months ago, but received no response. Starting two months ago, the company was fined 50,000 Brazilian reais ($12,700) for every day it ignored the order, an amount which rose to 1 million Brazilian reais ($250,000) in recent weeks.

Brazilian police argue that Facebook's stance is at odds with Yahoo, Google and local telecommunications companies, which have been willing to hand over user information to help investigations.

WhatsApp insists that is it unable to provide information that it does not have to the authorities. In a statement released on Wednesday, the company said, "arresting people with no connection to pending law enforcement investigation is a capricious step and we are concerned about the effects for the people of Brazil and innovation in the country."

In December a judicial order forced Brazil's telecommunications companies to block WhatsApp over its refusal to cooperate with a police inquiry. The move snarled communications for many of its 100 million users in Brazil for around 12 hours. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the time said he was "stunned" by the "extreme decision."