Brazil’s top court has decided that the rancher convicted of masterminding the murder of a US Nun in 2005 will remain in court while his case is appealed.
73-year-old Dorothy Stang was a nun as well as an environmental activist when she was shot down in the Amazonian state of Para after working for 30 years to protect the rain forest and defend poor settlers’ land rights.
During the trial, prosecutors argued the two ranchers hired gunmen for $25,000 to kill Stang after she blocked them from appropriating land the government had given to poor farmers.
The gunman, Rayfran das Neves Sales, is serving a 28-year sentence. He confessed he shot Stang six times on a muddy Amazon road. Two accomplices, Clodoaldo Carlos Batista and Amair Feijoli da Cunha, are serving 17 and 18 years, respectively, in an arrangement that allows them to work outside as long as they sleep in prison.
