A second suspect sought in the murder of a US-born nun who was an advocate for landless farmers was arrested late Sunday in the Brazilian state of Para, police said.
Rayfran das Neves Sales was captured about 20km from the town of Anapu after local residents recognized him from a photograph posted by police, police superindendent Pedro Monteiro told reporters.
Rayfran is the second suspect in the murder of Dorothy Stang, a 74-year-old missionary who spent decades working with the poor in Para state, arrested by Brazilian police.
Amair Feijole da Cunha, known by the nickname Tato, surrendered to authorities in the town of Altamira Saturday.
Tato was sought as a suspected go-between linking rancher Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, "Bida," who was suspected of paying for a hit, and two men suspected of carrying out the crime, Eduardo and Rayfran das Neves Sales.
The hit men earned US$19,000 dollars in cash for the murder, according to the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo.
The man accused of hiring two gunmen to kill Stang was charged Sunday with conspiracy to murder, authorities said.
Amair Freijoli da Cunha, known as Tato, was charged after nearly three and a half hours of interrogation by Para state police in Altamira, police said.
Cunha turned himself in Saturday after arrest warrants were issued for him and three other suspects, the two purported gunmen and a rancher accused of ordering the killing of Stang.
Cunha, who was accompanied by a lawyer, denied any involvement in the crime, but police said he gave too many contradictory statements and is clearly connected with the other suspects. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.
Police investigator Waldir Freire said Cunha ``was lying the whole time,'' the official Agencia Brasil news agency said.
Also Sunday, witnesses told police that Cunha and Stang had an altercation a day before she was shot six times at the Boa Esperanca settlement near the rural town of Anapu, about 2,100km north of Rio de Janeiro.
Police said Stang, a naturalized Brazilian originally from Dayton, Ohio, wanted Cunha to leave the settlement, where she helped some 400 families survive in the jungle.
Cunha allegedly hired the gunmen on behalf of Vitamiro Goncalves Moura, a rancher known as Bida who is accused of ordering the killing.
Moura and the two gunmen were still at large, police said. State and federal officers and jungle troops in helicopters and pickup trucks were hunting for them in the largely lawless Amazon region where Stang was killed. After Stang's murder Feb. 12, the government sent 2,000 troops to the northern state in an effort to avert more violence.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
RSS