About IFEX:

News by region:

IFEX Campaigns and Advocacy:

IFEX Email Products:

Opportunities and assistance:

Alert

IAPA hails trials of journalists' accused murderers

(IAPA/IFEX) - The following is a 4 October 2005 IAPA press release:

IAPA hails murder trials in Brazil

At its meeting beginning Friday in Indianapolis it will discuss legal strategies to combat impunity

MIAMI, Florida (October 4, 2005)--The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) praised Brazil for putting accused murderers of journalists on trial as a step in the battle against impunity and said it hoped that not only the perpetrators but those behind the crimes would also be brought to justice.

The chairman of the IAPA's Impunity Committee, Enrique Santos Calderón, hailed "the decision of the Brazilian judiciary to go after those responsible for the murders of journalists, demonstrated by the sentencing of four people involved in the slaying of Tim Lopes and Jorge Viera da Costa to four years' imprisonment."

The IAPA's General Assembly, whose principal objective is to review the state of press freedom in the Americas, will feature special sessions on violence against journalists and how to combat the impunity that surrounds the majority of crimes against news men and women in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 7-11.

On September 30, one of those accused of taking part in the June 2002 murder of Tim Lopes of the Brazilian television network TV Globo, Claudino dos Santos Coelho, a.k.a. Xuxa, was found guilty and sentenced to 23 years in prison. Five others - Elias Pereira da Silva, a.k.a. The Madman; Cláudio Orlando do Nascimento; Reinaldo Amaral de Jesús; Fernando Sátyro da Sila, and Elizeu Felicio da Souza - had been convicted earlier this year and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 23 to 28 years. Another defendant, Ángelo Ferreira da Sila, a.k.a. Primo, is due to go on trial on October 20.

Meanwhile, three people went on trial on September 28 for the murder of Jorge Veira da Costa, host of a news program broadcast by the now defunct radio station Rádio Tropical in Teresina, Piauí state. Geraldo da Silva e Silva, who was found guilty of fatally shooting da Costa, was sentenced to 19 years in prison; Raimundo Teles de Sousa Vidal, who drove the motorcycle used in the murder, was given an 18-year prison term, and João Matias Pinheiro, a military policeman from Piauí who provided the motorcycle, was sentenced to six years' imprisonment.

Da Costa died on March 30, 2001, six days after being shot by two men riding a motorcycle in the town of Timon, Maranhão state, where his radio broadcasts were heard and whose mayor, Francisco Rodrigues de Sousa, da Costa frequently criticized.

Three other people - a female employee in the Timon mayor's office, the mayor's wife who also worked there, and a local official - were alleged to have masterminded the murder, but were acquitted for lack of evidence.

Santos Calderón, editor of the Bogotá, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo, said it was important "to pursue investigations into crimes against journalists in order to bring the guilty to justice." Of the 289 murders of journalists recorded by the IAPA since 1987, he said, "in only a couple of them were the masterminds identified, and even in those cases they were not apprehended."