Men found guilty of Brazil activists' murder

Two men convicted of killing environmentalists Jose Claudio da Silva and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo in 2011. Last Modified: 04 Apr 2013 22:35

Two men have been found guilty of killing a couple who campaigned against illegal logging in the BrazilianAmazon. Jose Claudio da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo, had for years campaigned against loggers and ranchers who force slave labour to clear-cut large swaths of the Amazon. The couple were killed in a May 2011 ambush near the Amazonian town of Maraba. Jose Rodrigues Moreira, the alleged mastermind of the attack, was found not guilty. "This is a clear defeat for the families of the victims," Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from the court, said. "There are about 100 people outside the court, family members, friends, acquaintances. They're all chanting 'justice' and 'crime'. Even though two people were found guilty, the person they wanted to go to jail was found not guilty." Rodrigues Moreira and the two alleged perpetrators, Lindonjonson Silva Rocha and Alberto Lopes do Nascimento, were arrested in a jungle hideout 300 kilometres from Maraba in the northern state of Para after the attack. The murder was the first in a series of 10 over a three-month period in the Amazon, most of them in Para, one of the Brazilian states hardest hit by violence by local loggers and ranchers against rural workers and their supporters. A report by the CPT said big land owners in the area often enjoy "total impunity". At the time of the killing of da Silva and his wife, Amnesty International, the London-based rights watchdog, had called on Brazilian authorities to end these killings as well as "the impunity enjoyed by those who incite this violence".