Brazil court orders jail, retrial in US nun death

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Tuesday, 04.07.09
Brazil court orders jail, retrial in US nun death

By BRADLEY BROOKS
Associated Press Writer

RIO DE JANEIRO -- A Brazilian court on Tuesday ordered the arrest and retrial of an Amazon rancher acquitted of orchestrating the murder of American nun and rain forest activist Dorothy Stang.

Para state's top court reversed last year's not-guilty verdict for Vitalmiro Moura on a technicality, ruling that a video used by the defense was not admissible as evidence, the state prosecutor said.

"We're elated and we are convinced we will get a guilty verdict in the new trial," prosecutor Edson Souza told The Associated Press.

Souza said Moura is charged with ordering Stang's murder and that he had yet to be arrested. Calls to Moura's last-known defense attorney were not immediately answered.

Moura is accused of masterminding the 2005 death of the 73-year-old Stang, who was shot six times at close range with a revolver in the small jungle city of Anapu. A native of Dayton, Ohio, Stang spent three decades on the Amazon's wild frontier, working to preserve the rain forest and defend the rights of poor settlers whose lands were seized by powerful ranchers.

Her death prompted Amazon activists - more than 1,000 of whom have been murdered in the past 20 years - to demand Brazil's government crack down on the illegal seizing and clearing of rain forest to graze cattle, raise soy crops and harvest timber.

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