Two go on trial for murder of rainforest activist

More than 10 months after she was shot dead in the Amazon, two men will go on trial today for the murder of the rainforest activist and American nun Sister Dorothy Stang.

But as lawyers prepare to lay out the case against the two gunmen who allegedly shot her, there have been claims that the government is ignoring a wider conspiracy directly related to the destruction of the rainforest.

The two men accused of shooting the 73-year-old to death last February in a remote rainforest encampment - Raifram Sales and Clodaoaldo Batista - will go on trial in the north-eastern city of Belem.

Three other men said to have paid for the hit-men to assassinate Ms Stang will go on trial at a later date.

But US Senators and a UN envoy have said they believe that wealthy loggers and ranchers suspected of actually ordering the killing have escaped justice.

UN special rapporteur on human rights Hina Jilani, who is attending the trial, said this week: "We look forward to the government taking measures to catch the perpetrators.

"I have communicated my concern to the government and urged it to ensure impunity does not prevail."

In a letter to Brazilian president Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, more than 20 US Senators have urged him to press the authorities in Para state to investigate others who may have been involved in the killing.

They referred to a recent Amnesty International report which concluded that those behind most of the killings in Para state escaped with "impunity".

This year, at least 28 rural workers and activists have been murdered in Brazil - more than half in Para state.

Sister Dorothy had spent more than 30 years in the rainforest of Brazil trying to help landless peasants and small-scale subsistence farmers.

She had received numerous death threats from loggers who, she said, were destroying the rainforest.

She had the facts on her side: since 1970, 20 per cent of it has been cut down as a result of logging and development - at a rate of around eight football pitches a minute.

In recent years, the scale of the destruction has been a large as ever.

The murder of the white-haired known recalled the 1988 killing of activist Chico Mendes.

Like his death, her killing was seized on by campaigners around the world as underlining the bitter land battles being fought in Brazil and the struggle about the future of the rainforest.

One of Sister Dorothy's brothers, David, who is attending the trial, told The Independent: "What we hope is that this is the beginning.

It's a considerable step for the state of Para which has never held such a trial.

I hear the prosecutor is excellent." Sister Elizabeth Bowyer, the senior sister of the Ohio-based order of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, of which Sister Dorothy was a member, said: "It's very important that justice is done.

It's very important that murders with impunity stop.

We think the trial is very important." Emily Goldman, of the Washington-based human rights group RFK Memorial group, said it was believed that up to 30 people may have been involved in the plot behind Sister Dorothy's killing.

She said the federal government did not have the will-power to take on the powerful interests in Para state and elsewhere in the Amazon.

"This is an historic problem," she said.

The Brazilian Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos has vowed to continue the investigation into Sister Dorothy's killing in order to pursue others who may have been involved.

- INDEPENDENT