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Alert

Trials of journalist Manoel Leal de Oliveira's accused killers due to begin

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has urged the Brazilian press to closely follow the trial of Thomaz Iracy Moisés Guedes, which is due to begin in Itabuna, Bahia state, on 18 September 2003. Guedes is charged with participating in the14 January 1998 murder of Manoel Leal de Oliveira, the owner and editor of the Itabuna-based weekly "A Região".

Experience in the fight for justice demonstrates that the news media and civil society have to be alert and involved in order to successfully combat impunity, RSF said. The organisation also urged the media to follow the trial of another of Leal de Oliveira's accused killers, police officer Mozart Costa Brasil. His trial before the same Itabuna court is due to begin on 26 September 2003.

A report on Leal de Oliveira's case, entitled "Bahia: A Culture of Impunity?", was published by RSF in October 2002. Leal de Oliveira was gunned down after implicating the then mayor of Itabuna, Fernando Gomes, in a corruption scandal. Gomes is an ally of former state governor Antonio Carlos Magalhães, a Liberal Front Party (PFL) leader.

"Above all else, the Leal de Oliveira case exposes the limits of a system which puts a police force controlled by locally elected officials - in this case, Bahia state's civilian police - in charge of investigating the murder of a journalist who had targeted one of those elected officials," the report concluded.

According to the report, "The first few months of the investigation by the Bahia state civilian police could have come from a textbook on impunity . . . The case was closed in September 1998 without any suspect ever having been arrested and without Mayor Gomes even having been questioned." Judicial proceedings were reopened in May 2000, following revelations in the regional daily "A Tarde".

Guedes is accused of being the driver of the pickup truck used by Leal de Oliveira's killers. He was arrested in July 2002. Costa Brasil, a police officer with the Bahia state civilian police's Economic Crimes Section, was arrested as a suspect in December 2001. He was released two months later pending trial. A third suspect, Marcone Sarmento, is still on the run. No charge was ever brought against those presumed to be behind the killing, former mayor Gomes and his chief of staff, Maria Alicia de Araújo.