A high-ranking Venezuelan government official has accused the U.S. government of trying to "provoke and inconvenience" him, after he was stopped at a Mexican airport on Saturday.

Tarek William Saab, who as ombudsman is charged with defending human rights in Venezuela, said he had been questioned at Mexico City's Benito Juárez International Airport as he passed through the facility on his way to a conference, the Associated Press reported.

The interrogation was the result of an Interpol alert issued at the request of U.S. authorities, Mexican officials told him, Saab claimed. The ombudsman did not say what subjects had been discussed.

"This is a course of action that violates international law [and] the position of [ombudsman] that I hold within the Venezuelan government," Saab told his country's state television, according to Noticias24. "This is a undue police action by the United States, and its accomplice is Mexico's immigration [authority]."

Saab was meeting with Venezuela's ambassador in Mexico City, Hugo José García Hernández, who was about to submit an official note of protest to the Mexican government, the website detailed.

"This is no causal incident not an accident, given that they showed me a piece of paper that contained details about my entire itinerary," the ombudsman complained. "Once again, the United States behave in an unfriendly way toward the Venezuelan government."

Meanwhile, Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, told the Associated Press that the department had no comment regarding Saab's accusations. Interpol and the Mexican foreign ministry could not be immediately reached for comment, the newswire added.

Mexico's National Commission for Human Rights (CNDH), a local government agency, said it was aware of the incident and had launched its own inquiry, Últimas Noticias noted.

"As soon as we learned of what had happened, officials pertaining to this national body directed themselves to the Mexico City International Airport to corroborate if the Venezuelan ombudsman had been detained and if, in that case, his human rights were being respected," national ombudsman Luis Raúl González Pérez said in a statement.

When CNDH personnel arrived, however, immigration authorities had already processed Saab, and the Venezuelan official was on his way to his final destination, González Pérez added.