rather than taking the news viewpoint almost directly from the bbc, I went looking and found this from the other side of the fence - cuba.

 http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7BE1B9CF1D-C189-4C03-8A03-DD6A7A6B79A0%7D&language=EN

"Ortega was found guilty of the charges of civil rebellion, instigating crime, and bearing false identity documents for which he was sentenced to 15 years, 11 months and 5 days in prison, judicial sources revealed.
The former leader is considered the mastermind behind the country's strike against the government at the turn of 2002-03, which in the oil industry alone caused a 10 billion dollar loss.
Among the evidence presented during trial were recordings of Ortega's public statements calling to overthrow Chavez months after the unsuccessful coup d'état."

All sources indicate that he was a major [internal] player in the attempted coup. Treason is an accepted part of many countries' constitutions - I don't see why the issue is different for ve.

He also fled the country once his strike ended, and returned carrying forged documentation. Again, a crime anywhere. While I don't condone it (such a lengthy sentence or the law of sedition - present in many countries, east and west), he is hardly an innocent man according to the laws of ve, and his involvement in the attempted coup to overthrow the govt was contrary to the wishes of the venezuelan majority.

derek

"Two seminal events define modern Venezuelan history: the April 2002 military coup, which lasted 48 hours, and the December 2002-January 2003 economic sabotage, also known as the oil coup. Led by its president, Carlos Ortega, the CTV was a key protagonist of both actions, but rank-and-file workers were never consulted by the union leadership. In any event the rate of unionization in Venezuela has historically been very low: 14 percent of the formal sector comprising companies with five or more employees. So when the coup was reversed by uprisings in the military barracks but also the presence of masses of people in the streets around the presidential palace, workers were among those in the streets demanding the return of Chavez, though not as unions. In fact Linares says the only union that responded as such to restore Chavez to the presidency was his fledgling Passenger Transportation Workers Guild."

Hugo Chavez is a thug. Simple. Nothing more needs to be said.