VENEZUELAN opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was convicted on Thursday of inciting deadly anti-government riots last year.

The Popular Will (VP) party leader received the maximum possible sentence of almost 14 years’ imprisonment for public incitement to violence and criminal association.

His lawyers vowed to appeal against the 13-year, nine-month jail term. He had already spent 18 months in jail before the verdict was delivered, largely due to delaying tactics by his legal team.

More violence erupted outside the Caracas court before the sentencing as Mr Lopez’s supporters clashed with a pro-government demonstration branding the opposition kingpin a murderer and a terrorist.

Two women were hurt despite attempts by riot police to separate the rival gatherings. One elderly Popular Will member, Horacio Blanco, died shortly afterwards.

He was quickly hailed as a martyr at another opposition rally in a wealthy district of the capital as the sentencing hearing began.

The year of riots that started in January 2014 — dubbed “the Exit” by Mr Lopez — left 44 people dead and thousands injured or arrested.

Opposition miscreants attacked police and government supporters and strung piano wire across roads to decapitate motorcyclists.

Prosecutors brought some 100 witnesses and presented 700 messages posted by Mr Lopez on social networking site Twitter which, they argued, promoted violence and rejection of the elected government’s authority.

US Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez on Tuesday to express concern about the trial, days after meeting Mr Lopez’s wife Lilian Tintori in Washington.

Mr Lopez was born into a wealthy family with links to Venezuela’s crucial oil industry. He was educated at Harvard university in the US.

Elected mayor of Caracas’s Chacao district in 2000, he was barred from re-election in 2008 for misusing public funds.

He has been accused of playing a role in the 2002 protests that formed the pretext for a short-lived military coup against late president Hugo Chavez.

His VP party is part of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition that some Western commentators hope will defeat President Nicolas Maduro’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) government in elections mooted for November.