Anti-Chavez leader under house arrest

The Caracas central court has put a leading opponent of President Hugo Chavez under house arrest on charges of civil rebellion and criminal instigation.

Carlos Fernandez, president of the Fedecameras, the chamber of commerce, was seized by the state security police during a midnight raid on a restaurant in the capital, Caracas, on Wednesday.

The court dismissed a charge of treason, and two other charges, during a 13-hour preliminary hearing which ended yesterday morning, and confined him to his home in Valencia, in west Venezuela.

The president's opponents linked it to the issuing of a warrant for the arrest of Carlos Ortega, another leader of the political strike intended to bring down the regime, described it as the beginning of a political witch hunt.

Mr Ortega, a trade union leader and one of the president's fiercest critics, has gone into hiding.

Mr Fernandez, 52, told Globovision television: "They treated me very well, they respected all my rights."

Applauding the judge's decision during his weekly television address, Mr Chavez described Mr Fernandez as "a terrorist and a coup-plotter".

"Let the decision be obeyed; it is the court's order. If it were up to me he wouldn't be at home, he would be behind bars," he added.

Julio Borges, of the Justice First party, said: This is like someone giving you a huge blow to the head and then handing out sweets, when they drop some of the charges and put you under house arrest. But the whole incident makes no legal sense; this is about politics."

The strike, which fizzled out in the first week of February, severely disrupted oil exports, which account for half Venezuela's state revenues.

But the state oil monopoly's headquarters is picketed by supporters of the president, some of them armed, and on Saturday night a group of policemen passing by on their way from a colleague's funeral came under fire. One was killed and five wounded, the head of the police motorcycle brigade, Miguel Pinto, said.

After a series of attacks on the police by Chavez supporters, the chief of police, Henry Vivas, ordered officers to stay away from the oil company offices to avoid clashes. But the funeral home is only a few hundred metres away.

"We never thought it would come to this," Mr Pinto said.

Mr Fernandez's arrest came a few days after the killing of three dissident soldiers and an anti-Chavez protester. The police are investigating the deaths, which relatives say were acts of political persecution.