Venezuela: Guaidó under investigation for 'sabotage' of power grid

Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has asked the country’s supreme court to open an investigation into opposition leader Juan Guaidó for alleged involvement in the “sabotage” of the country’s power grid.

Related: US pulls all staff from Venezuela as Maduro blames blackout on 'demonic' Trump plot

Tarek Saab announced the inquiry on Tuesday, a day after the embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, accused Donald Trump of masterminding a “demonic” plot with the country’s opposition to force him from power.

Guaidó – who most western governments now recognize as Venezuela’s legitimate interim leader – is already under investigation for allegedly fomenting violence, but authorities have not tried to detain him since he violated a travel ban and then returned home from a tour of Latin American countries.

Saab said the case against Guaidó also involves messages allegedly inciting people to robbery and looting during the crippling blackout which began on Thursday.

Maduro’s political foes and many specialists believe the nationwide blackout is the result of years of mismanagement, corruption and incompetence.

“We are in the middle of a catastrophe that is not the result of a hurricane, that is not the result of a tsunami,” Guaidó told CNN on Sunday.

“It’s the product of the inefficiency, the incapability, the corruption of a regime that doesn’t care about the lives of Venezuelans.”

But in a televised nationwide address on Monday night Maduro accused the White House of launching an imperialist “electromagnetic attack”. Critics condemned it as a cynical attempt to deflect criticism of his regime’s responsibility.

“The United States’ imperialist government ordered this attack,” Maduro claimed in his 35-minute speech, only his second significant intervention since the crisis began last week. “They came with a strategy of war of the kind that only these criminals – who have been to war and have destroyed the people of Iraq, of Libya, of Afghanistan and of Syria – think up.”

Maduro alleged the US had conducted the attack – in league with “puppets and clowns” from the Venezuelan opposition – to create “a state of despair, of widespread want and of conflict” that would justify a foreign intervention.

Maduro, who gave no evidence for his claims, gave little hint that an end was in sight to a crisis that the opposition blames for at least 21 deaths and many fear could plunge the country into violence and turmoil.

On Tuesday, the foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, ordered US diplomats to leave the country within 72 hours. “The presence on Venezuelan soil of these officials represents a risk for the peace, unity and stability of the country,” the government said in a statement.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, had announced on Monday night that Washington was withdrawing all remaining diplomatic staff from Caracas.

“This decision reflects the deteriorating situation in Venezuela as well as the conclusion that the presence of US diplomatic staff at the embassy has become a constraint on US policy,” Pompeo tweeted.

Related: 'We call it survival': Venezuelans improvise solutions as blackout continues

Maduro has been fighting for political survival since January when Guaidó declared himself Venezuela’s legitimate leader and was swiftly recognised as interim president by dozens of western nations including the US and Britain.

Maduro’s many opponents – who blame him for an economic collapse that has triggered the most severe migration crisis in recent Latin American history – ridicule his claims that the outage is part of a White House conspiracy.

Anna Ferrera, a student activist in Caracas, said: “They go around and around saying this was sabotage and how the US always sabotages things and the empire is going against Venezuela. But they haven’t given any [credible] explanation.

“They always make up stories to explain the flaws of the system. This is outrageous,” added Ferrera, who said she feared many might accept Maduro’s version because the blackout had knocked out communication systems across the country, giving his administration a monopoly on information.

Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based political analyst, said Maduro had appeared “worried, anxious and absolutely desperate” in his Monday night broadcast, suggesting the situation was dire.

“It is clear, from what he said, that the government does not control the situation (nobody does) and they do not have any plan or strategy,” Pantoulas tweeted.

In his speech, Maduro, who inherited Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution after his 2013 death, vowed that the supposed attack on Venezuela’s grid would be thwarted.

“Victory belongs to us,” he declared. “What you can be certain of is that sooner rather later, in the coming days, we will win this battle definitively. We will win – and we will do it for Venezuela. We will do it for our homeland. We will do it for you. We will do it because of our people’s right to happiness.”