Venezuela's chief prosecutor asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for protection Friday, days after the Supreme Court barred her from leaving the country and ordered her bank accounts frozen.

Tensions between Luisa Ortega Diaz and President Nicolas Maduro's socialist administration have been steadily escalating since she contested a Supreme Court decision in late March that dissolved the opposition-controlled National Assembly and sparked a deadly wave of unrest.

Since then, she has become one of the few critical voices within the government — other than the sidelined congress — challenging Maduro's push to rewrite the constitution and pressing charges against officers responsible for deaths during anti-government protests.

On Friday, Ortega Diaz's office announced it was summoning the chief of Venezuela's feared Sebin intelligence agency, Gustavo Gonzalez, to appear on suspicion of "committing grave and systemic violations of human rights."

Prosecutors said they are investigating incidents of illegitimate detentions, arbitrary raids and cases in which people have remained imprisoned despite court orders that they be freed.

Maduro responded hours later by promoting Gonzalez to head the nation's army. He called Gonzalez and Antonio Benavides Torres, another high-ranking official under investigation by the state prosecutor, "brave patriots.""They have defended the peace of the republic and have all my support," Maduro said.