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 News from Around the Americas | February 2005 
First Arrest Made in Nun's Slaying in Amazon
 Associated Press
 Ltamira, Brazil - The man accused of hiring two gunmen to kill an American nun in the Amazon rain forest was charged Sunday with conspiracy to murder, authorities said.
The man, Amair Freijoli da Cunha, was charged after nearly three and a half hours of interrogation by Pará state police in Altamira, 82 miles from where the nun, 73-year-old Sister Dorothy Stang, was shot dead on Feb. 12, the police said.
Mr. Cunha is accused of hiring the gunmen on behalf of Vitamiro Goncalves Moura, a rancher suspected of ordering the killing.
Mr. Cunha turned himself in Saturday after arrest warrants were issued for him, the two accused of being the gunmen and Mr. Moura.
Mr. Cunha, who was accompanied by a lawyer, denied any involvement in the crime, but the police said he gave too many contradictory statements and was clearly connected with the other suspects.
If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.
Also on Sunday, witnesses told the police that Mr. Cunha and Sister Dorothy had an altercation a day before she was shot six times at the Boa Esperança settlement near the rural town of Anapu, about 1,300 miles north of Rio de Janeiro.
The police said Sister Dorothy, a naturalized Brazilian originally from Dayton, Ohio, wanted Mr. Cunha to leave the settlement, where she helped some 400 families survive in the rugged jungle. Other details about the dispute were not immediately known, the police said.
Mr. Moura and the two men accused of being the gunmen were still at large, the police said.
State and federal officers and jungle troops in helicopters and pickup trucks were hunting for them in the largely lawless Amazon region where Sister Dorothy, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, was killed.
The killing made her the most celebrated person to die defending the rain forest since Chico Mendes, the rubber tapper and guardian of the Amazon who was slain in 1988.
And while Mr. Mendes's death brought international attention, increased environmental awareness and government regulations, many conditions have remained the same. The Amazon is still a wild, mostly lawless region. Loggers, ranchers and developers are still cutting it down - about 20 percent of the 1.6-million-square-mile wilderness has already been destroyed.
An estimated 9,169 square miles of the Amazon rain forest was cut down in 2003, the last year for which government figures are available. |
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