Brazilian rancher convicted of planning Amazon defender’s murder is set free pending appeal

Brazilian man convicted of US nun’s slaying freed

SAO PAULO — One of the ranchers convicted of masterminding the murder of U.S. nun and Amazon defender Dorothy Stang was scheduled to be released Wednesday pending an appeal of his 30-year sentence, a court spokesman said.

Judge Maria de Nazare Gouveia ordered Regivaldo Galvao freed after deciding he does not represent a flight risk, court spokesman Linomar Bahia said by telephone from the northern jungle state of Para.

Bahia said he did not know how long the appeals process would take.

Stang was a Dayton, Ohio, native who worked for three decades to preserve the rain forest and defend poor settlers’ land rights.

Prosecutors have said Galvao — the last of five defendants to stand trial in the case — helped orchestrate Stang’s killing in 2005 because she blocked him and another rancher from taking land the government had given to poor farmers.

A jury convicted Galvao on May 1, and the judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

Two weeks earlier, rancher Vitalmiro Moura was given the same sentence after being found guilty of collaborating with Galvao.

Prosecutors have said the two men offered to pay a gunman the equivalent of $25,000 to kill the 73-year-old Stang.

The Amazon region — an area the size of the United States west of the Mississippi River — is rife with violence and illegal activities, including deforestation and illegal mining.

According to the Catholic Land Pastoral, a watchdog group that tracks rural violence in Brazil, more than 1,500 activists, small farmers, judges and others have been killed across Brazil over the past 25 years, usually by gunmen paid by powerful ranchers with land claims at stake.

In addition to Galvao and Moura, three other men were tried in Stang’s case:

—Rayfran das Neves Sales is serving a 28-year sentence after he confessed to having shot Stang six times on a muddy Amazon road.

—Clodoaldo Carlos Batista, an accomplice of Sales, is serving out a 17-year sentence in Brazil’s “semi-open” prison system, meaning he can work outside but must sleep in jail.

—Amair Feijoli da Cunha was sentenced to 18 years in prison for acting as a middleman between the ranchers and Sales. He also is imprisoned in the “semi-open” system.