[02:04]

Police re-enact murder of American nun
Friday, February 25, 2005 Posted: 1656 GMT (0056 HKT)


RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- With the help of two murder suspects and a witness, police re-enacted the killing of Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old American nun authorities believe was shot because of her work defending rain forest communities.

The group gathered Thursday at the crime scene on a muddy jungle road to show what happened February 12, when Stang was shot six times. Para state police said the three versions, re-enacted separately, were consistent with each other.

"There was no discrepancy," police inspector Walame Machado said in a televised interview after the re-enactment. "This helps to clear things up."

The witness said the gunmen exchanged words with Stang, who read two verses of the Bible to them before she was shot.

According to the suspects' accounts, Stang tried to protect herself with her shoulder bag and a bible when she was gunned down.

"It was barbarous. She was shot at point-blank range," said Joaquim Araujo, a legal expert who watched the re-enactment.

A third suspect, charged with hiring the gunmen, was not asked to re-enact events because he was not present when Stang was shot. Police are still searching for rancher Vitalmiro Moura, who is accused of ordering the killing.

Stang spent the last 23 years of her life working with poor rain forest communities around Anapu, a small town on the Trans-Amazon highway about 1,300 miles (2,100 kilometers) northwest of Rio de Janeiro.

Police believe she was killed in a dispute over a pristine stretch of rain forest that she wanted to protect for poor settlers. Moura wanted to clear the trees on the land to make a pasture.

Stang's killing focused international attention on the violent state of Para, where jungle devastation and violence are common.

The Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission estimates that Para was the site of nearly half the 1,237 land-related killings carried in Brazil over the past 30 years.

Environmentalists say the Amazon loses 9,170 square miles (23,473 square kilometers) of forest every year, and that about 20 percent of the 1.6 million square miles (4.14 million square kilometers) of wilderness has already been cut down.

Leio AQUI


 

Postado por Ana M.C_Portugal