Three men were indicted on Thursday for killing an environmental activist couple in New Ipixuna, Brazil, three months ago.
The couple Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva, 52, and Maria do Espirito Santo Silva, 51 had been ambushed and shot multiple times by two gunmen while trying to cross a bridge, said the lawyer for the Pastoral Land Commission in Marabá, José Batista, who arrived on the scene shortly after the crime, according to the Brazilian public prosecutor.
Jose Rodrigues Moreira, a local farmer, was found to be the mastermind of the crime. His brother, Lindonjonson Silva Rocha and another man, Alberto Lopes Teixeira, were the gunmen who carried out the murder, said police chief Silvio Maues.
“There is no doubt about the authorship and execution of the crime,” he said in a police report.
The couple was targeted because they often reported on illegal loggers and settlers encroaching on protected land to the Brazilian government, said Maues.
The indictment was filed on Monday and arrest of the three men was requested, according to police investigators.
The minister of the Secretariat of Human Rights, Maria do Rosario, said that 131 people in northern Brazil whose lives have been threatened will receive police protection.
