A former Venezuelan state governor and presidential candidate has been jailed after accusing President Hugo Chavez's government of links to subversive groups in Latin America, judicial authorities said on Tuesday.

The detention of opposition politician Oswaldo Alvarez Paz on charges of conspiracy, spreading false information and inciting hatred will fuel criticism that Chavez, a leftist, is taking Venezuela down an increasingly dictatorial route.
 

A handful of Chavez opponents are now in jail, living in exile or facing probes.
 

With the political atmosphere heating up before legislative elections in September - they are seen as a curtain raiser for a 2012 presidential vote - Chavez says his foes are increasingly breaking the law in their desire to topple him.
 

A court ordered Alvarez's arrest at his home in the capital Caracas late on Monday.
He was governor of oil producing Zulia state in the early 1990s and unsuccessfully ran for the presidency with the opposition COPEI party in 1993.
 

An inquiry began earlier this month after Alvarez gave an interview to pro-opposition TV network Globovision in which he accused the government of having ties to illegal groups.

Allegations
"The Venezuelan regime has relations with structures that serve narco-trafficking, like [Colombian rebel group] FARC and others which exist in the continent and the world," he said.
 

The accusations against Alvarez could carry a jail sentence of between two and 16 years, local media said.
 

"I assume the responsibility for the things that I have said and that I do," he told reporters before his arrest.
 

His lawyer, Omar Estancio, said the arrest order was "disproportional" and "politicised".
 

The human rights wing of the Organization of American States (OAS) last month criticized what it described as the concentration of power and curbing of civil liberties in Venezuela under Chavez.
 

"The punitive power of the state is being used to intimidate or punish people on account of their political opinions," it said.
 

Chavez supporters say, however, that he is a victim of a US-led campaign of vilification, and that he is reversing decades of exploitation in the South American OPEC member with pro-poor policies like free clinics and schools.
 

Perhaps the best known Chavez critic in jail is Raul Isaias Baduel, a former defence minister who left government in 2007 to campaign against his former boss but was imprisoned last year on corruption charges.
 

Source: Reuters