VENEZUELA’S opposition-controlled parliament has passed a new law to free anti-government terrorists and other criminals.

The so-called Amnesty Law, passed on Tuesday night, would pardon a wide range of crimes committed between January 1 1999 — a month before the late president Hugo Chavez’s first election victory — and the present.

United Socialist Party (PSUV) President Nicolas Maduro condemned the legislation from the Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) alliance and vowed to veto it.

“They are approving a law to protect killers, criminals, drug traffickers and terrorists,” he said in a televised address. “You can be sure it will not pass.”

PSUV National Assembly deputies and party supporters say that the timeframe betrays the law’s true purpose as a get-out-of-jail-free card for those guilty of the failed 2002 coup d’etat and other acts of treason and economic sabotage.

It could see more than 70 opposition leaders freed, with far-right Popular Will (VP) party leader Leopoldo Lopez the most prominent among them.

Mr Lopez was jailed for almost 14 years last year for inciting 2014’s deadly Guarimba regime change riots that left 43 people dead — including youthful PSUV Deputy Robert Serra and his female assistant, murdered at his Caracas flat.

The Committee of Victims of the Guarimbas said Mud deputies had ignored their concerns about the law.

Former National Assembly speaker Diosdado Cabello called the law “a coup against Venezuela’s people” and a “self-pardoning of murderers.”

Hardliner Mr Lopez could end up as the Mud presidential candidate if the coalition’s schemes to unseat Mr Maduro this year succeed.