Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado says she has been barred from public office for 12 months.
Maria Corina Machado, who is a former congresswoman, said she was given 15 days to appeal against the decision.
It was not clear on what grounds she was barred but the move could prevent her from standing again for congress in December’s parliamentary election.
Maria Corina Machado led a major street protest against the government in early 2014.
Government opponents have accused President Nicolas Maduro of bullying the opposition ahead of the elections.
Another leading opposition figure, Daniel Ceballos, a former mayor who is also running for parliament, was also banned from holding public office.
Venezuelan media said Daniel Ceballos was disqualified for not presenting a sworn wealth declaration.
Maria Corina Machado was stripped of her seat in the National Assembly last year after accepting an invitation from Panama to speak before the Organization of American States (OAS) to give her account of the wave of unrest which spread through Venezuela in early 2014.
The state prosecutor’s office then charged Maria Corina Machado of taking part in an alleged plot to kill President Nicolas Maduro.
Venezuela’s leading opposition figure Maria Corina Machado is to be investigated over an alleged plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro.
Maria Corina Machado, a former congresswoman, led a major street protest against President Nicolas Maduro’s government in January.
She dismissed the accusations as a charade designed to silence her.
The alleged plot came in a series of emails which Maria Corina Machado says are fake.
She said the charges were designed to distract Venezuelans from a growing economic crisis.
Officials produced the emails in the midst of months of street protests.
They said they contained conversations between Maria Machado and US State Department officials discussing a plot to overthrow the Venezuelan government.
Maria Machado said the messages used her old email accounts and had been manipulated and were fabricated.
She said on her social media account that the conspiracy charges were in retribution for demanding a new leadership at the state elections council.
Maria Machado had helped lead demonstrations which had initially been started in January in the western state of Tachira by university students.
They were protesting against the high rate of crime on campuses and the country’s struggling economy.
She was expelled from the National Assembly in March after she backed the protests which had spread across the country.
The President of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello said Maria Machado had been expelled because she had incited violent protests in which over forty protesters and police officers died.
Before her court appearance, she said: “Our protest movement has always been peaceful in its essence. Violence is what the regime does to frighten people and de-motivate citizen protest.”
She said she would continue to support all types of protests in the country against what she described as “daily abuses committed by the government”.
Since narrowly winning an election last year to succeed his mentor, the late President Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro has said there have been five assassination attempts against him and more than a dozen acts of sabotage and conspiracy.
Conspiracy carries a prison sentence of between eight and 16 years in Venezuela.
Venezuela has stripped leading opposition congresswoman Maria Corina Machado of her mandate after she spoke before the Organization of American States (OAS) last week.
Maria Corina Machado had been invited by Panama to give her account of the recent wave of unrest in Venezuela.
But Venezuela’s authorities say Maria Corina Machado “acted as a Panamanian official” by accepting the invitation.
The decision means Maria Corina Machado will lose her parliamentary immunity and could be prosecuted for “inciting violence”.
More than 30 people have died since mid-February in demonstrations against high inflation, food shortages and violence levels.
Venezuela’s National Assembly’s president, Diosdado Cabello, said Maria Corina Machado had contravened the constitution.
Venezuela has stripped Maria Corina Machado of her Congress mandate after she spoke before the OAS
Diosdado Cabello also said Maria Corina Machado was introduced at the OAS meeting in Washington DC as an “alternate ambassador” to Panama.
“Maybe the Panamanian government will now name her permanent ambassador,” he added.
Arriving in Peru’s capital, Lima, for a seminar at an institution presided by the 2010 Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa, Maria Corina Machado accused Diosdado Cabello of running a “dictatorship in the National Assembly”.
Maria Corina Machado wrote later on Twitter: “Mr. Cabello: I am a Congresswoman at the National Assembly so long as the people of Venezuela want it.”
She also said she was prepared to deal with the consequences of her actions.
“If the price that I must pay for having gone to the OAS so that the voice of the Venezuelan people could be heard is that I’m being persecuted today, in what they’re doing to me now, I will pay for it one and a million times.”
On Saturday, President Nicolas Maduro had already referred to Maria Corina Machado as “former congresswoman”.
Maria Corina Machado has been openly demanding the resignation of Nicolas Maduro since the start of the recent protests.
Venezuela’s government accuses “right-wing fascists” of inciting the unrest as part of a plot to overthrow the government.
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