Attorney-general targets judges

Luisa Ortega is highest public official to break ranks with Maduro over Venezuela crisis

Venezuela’s attorney-general raised the stakes in her stand-off with the government Tuesday by demanding eight Supreme Court judges loyal to President Nicolas Maduro be put on trial.

A staunch figure of the ruling party, Attorney-general Luisa Ortega, 59, is the highest public official to break ranks with Maduro over the country’s deadly political crisis.

She has accused him and his allies of acting unconstitutionally in their standoff against the opposition in recent months of antigovernment protests.

In her latest manoeuvre to pressure the socialist president, she told reporters she’d filed a case accusing the eight judges of allowing “a breakdown in constitutional order.”

The charge refers to a ruling by the court in late March that seized power from the opposition-controlled National Assembly legislature.

‘Family threatened’

The court later revoked the decision under international pressure, but it sparked a series of protests that has continued ever since.

Clashes between demonstrators and police have left 67 people dead, according to prosecutors.

Ortega said in a radio interview on Monday that intelligence officials had been threatening and harassing her family.

Pro-government lawmaker Pedro Carreno filed a motion in the assembly calling for the court to order that Ortega be examined by a psychologist.

“It is clear that this lady is not in her right mind,” he told reporters. He called for experts to declare she was suffering from “insanity” and should be fired.

Former Supreme Court judge Blanca Rosa Marmol told journalists the assembly was the only body legally entitled to remove an attorney-general from her post.

Analysts say Ortega’s legal challenges to the government could widen divisions in Maduro’s camp, making it harder for him to stay in power.