Brazil: Dorothy Stang murder suspect in custody again

Brazilian police have arrested a rancher suspected of involvement
murder of rainforest activist Dorothy Stang. Regivaldo Galvão has been
held for allegedly illegally acquiring titles to the land the US nun
died trying to defend. The detention of Galvão, at his home in the
Amazon state of Para, could lead to the reopening of the Stang case.

She was shot in 2005 amid a dispute with ranchers over land she wanted
to be given state protection. Police said Galvão was arrested in
Altamira after a judge ordered his capture as part of a probe into
whether he forged titles to the area where the 73-year-old nun was
killed. Prosecutors say that Galvão and another rancher hired men to
kill Stang. Galvão was arrested in 2005, but was freed on bail by
Brazil’s supreme court in 2006 and has since used appeals to avoid
trial. He has denied having any role in Stang’s death, arguing he had
no interest in the lands she was defending.

But prosecutors say that
in November he went before Brazil’s land reform agency, Incra, to
present documents showing he owned the disputed land and wanted it
back. Prosecutor Felicio Pontes has said the land where Stang was
killed was public property, and if Galvão claimed to own it the case
against him could be reopened. A second rancher accused of Stang’s
murder, Vitalmiro Moura, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in May
2007. But his sentence was overturned this year after gunman Rayfran
das Neves Sales confessed to killing Stang and said he acted alone. He
is serving a 28-year jail sentence for the crime. Stang, from Dayton,
Ohio, spent three decades trying to preserve the rainforest and defend
poor settlers from having their land taken from them by powerful
ranchers. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/28/brazil-dorothy-stang-rainforest-activist

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