Venezuela opposition leader bags 14-year jail term over ‘treason’

Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez has been sentenced to more than 13 years in prison, his lawyer Roberto Marrero has said.

The popular dissident, a US-trained economist who has been held at a military prison since February 2014, is accused of inciting violence against the government of President Nicolas Maduro and attempting to force his ouster.

A court in Caracas, the capital, found Lopez guilty late on Thursday for his role as the leader of a street protest movement which was involved in bloody clashes with security forces in February last year.

The sentence was for 13 years, nine months and seven days.

He will serve out his sentence in the military prison of Ramo Verde, where he has been held since he turned himself in shortly after the protests.

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“If the sentence condemns me you will be more fearful to read it than I will be to hear it, because you know that I’m innocent,” Lopez defiantly told the judge according to a witness, David Smolansky.

Smolansky, a Caracas neighbourhood mayor who was at the closed-door hearing, described Lopez’s appearance via Twitter.

Fighting broke out earlier in the day between supporters of Lopez, 44, and pro-government demonstrators outside the courthouse.

Wielding sticks and plastic bottles, supporters of socialist Maduro’s government descended on a group of Lopez’s followers who had been waiting since the early hours of the morning for the final phase of his trial, an AFP news agency correspondent said.