The Venezuelan government dropped the murder and terrorism charges against opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, but prosecutors still accused him of arson and conspiracy in a hearing held on Wednesday night, local newspaper El Tiempo reports.
Protests have swept the South American country for more than a week with violent clashes between students and police. Six people are dead as of Friday. Lopez has become one of the faces of the movement, and the Venezuelan government issued a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of instigating the big protests on Feb. 12 that resulted in three deaths.
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After days in hiding, Lopez turned himself in on Tuesday, clutching a Venezuelan flag and holding a flower stem. Authorities transported him to a military facility, where he has been held ever since.
Lopez was formally charged of arson and conspiracy — but not of murder and terrorism — in the hearing, which was held on Wednesday in a bus outside the military prison for security reasons, officials said. Authorities didn't want to transport him to the court, and Lopez's lawyers didn't want the hearing to be held inside the prison. If convicted, he could face 10 years in prison.
"Repression on the street, repression against the protests, hearings in prisons — this is a dictatorship," said Lopez, according to a tweet by one of his lawyers, Bernardo Pulido.
The judge presiding over the hearing ruled that Lopez will be detained until the end of the trial. However his lawyers say they will appeal this decision, according to El Tiempo.
Meanwhile, President Nicolas Maduro's government is fighting the protests both on the streets and in the media. On Feb. 12, the government forced the Colombian cable news channel NTN24 out of satellite TV listings across the country. Maduro is now threatening to expel CNN out of Venezuela due to its coverage of the protests, according to Reuters.
"Enough! I won't accept war propaganda against Venezuela," he said.
President Maduro and members of his government accuse protesters of being "fascists" who are plotting a coup. Officials also believe the United States government is behind the movement, fueling the unrests and financing the protesters.
"I know who gives them the money," Maduro said, according to a tweet from Delcy Rodriguez, the country's communications and information minister.
Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Assembly and a longtime regime official with close ties to former President Hugo Chavez, went a step further. "It's amazing the amount of money that the United States is spending to topple the Bolivarian Revolution with artists, media, lackeys, paramilitaries, assassins, etc.," he tweeted.
U.S. President Barack Obama criticized the Venezuelan government in the wake of its response to the protests this week, urging Maduro to release the arrested students and address the "legitimate grievances" of the Venezuelan population. Maduro said Obama's comments were a "gross interference in internal affairs."
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