Brazil: Rancher convicted in murder of activist/nun

Justice may finally have been served in the case of a U.S. nun murdered for her social activism.

Dorothy Stang was slain in 2005 due to her relentless campaigning in favor of land rights and protecting the Amazon rainforest. Vitalmiro Vastos de Moura and Rayfran das Neves would later be convicted for her masterminding her murder yet in 2008 a judge controversially overturned de Moura’s punishment. Last April another tribunal ordered that de Moura be retired for his role in Stang’s death and on Monday a guilty verdict was delivered against him:

Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, 39, was given the maximum term by a jury overnight in the northern Brazilian city of Belem for the assassination of Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old missionary who was fatally shot six times as she walked down on a remote jungle track.

The two men who carried out her murder, Rayfran das Neves Sales and Clodoaldo Batista, are already serving 28-year and 17-year terms, respectively, while another, Amir Feijoli, was also behind bars for 18 years for acting as an intermediary.

Neves Sales, Batista and Feijoli all testified against Bastos de Moura, who maintained his silence throughout the trial.

Brazilian land rights groups welcomed the verdict though Land Pastoral spokeswoman Cristiane Passos noted that it’s “still far from the end of the violence” against activists. One such activist was labor union chief Pedro Alcantara de Souza who was killed last week in the same region where Stang was slain.

Image- MSNBC (2004 image of Dorothy Stang)
Online Sources- BBC News, Washington Post, The Latin Americanist, AFP