Brazilian Widow Testifies in Land Conflict Murder Trial, Wins 35-Year Sentence

A former military police officer in Brazil was sentenced to 35 years and four months in prison for orchestrating the 2015 murder of environmentalist Raimundo dos Santos Rodrigues and the attempted murder of his wife, Maria, inside the Gurupi Biological Reserve in Maranhão state.

On April 29, 2026, Judge Philipe Silveira da Cunha delivered the verdict in Bom Jardim district, concluding a trial that spanned more than 16 hours. Francisco da Silva Sousa, 66, was found guilty by a jury for hiring gunmen to carry out the attack. He was immediately taken into custody and will serve his sentence in a closed facility.

The crime occurred on August 25, 2015, as Raimundo and Maria returned home from Buriticupu on a motorcycle. Two men on another motorcycle shot them on a dirt road near their community inside the federally protected Gurupi Biological Reserve, managed by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio). Raimundo was shot seven times and killed with a machete, while Maria was struck twice and survived.

Authorities identified rancher José Escórcio de Cerqueira as the mastermind behind the killing. In a police statement, Cerqueira confessed he paid R$ 10,000 (approximately $1,962 at the time) to Sousa to hire the gunmen. Raimundo had repeatedly reported illegal logging activities by Cerqueira and others to law enforcement since joining the reserve’s advisory board in 2013. Cerqueira, then over 80 years old, died in 2017 before facing trial. His son, José Escórcio de Cerqueira Filho, was investigated but not charged due to insufficient evidence.

Maria, who was 37 at the time of the attack, has lived in hiding for over a decade after being shot in the abdomen and elbow. She fled through several cities in Maranhão—Açailândia, Imperatriz, and São Luís—before enrolling in the state’s Protection Program for Threatened Victims and Witnesses (PROVITA), managed by the Maranhão Society for Human Rights (SMDH). In October 2015, she and her two youngest children were relocated to an undisclosed location in another state under government protection.

Since then, Maria has remained in exile, the longest-serving participant in Maranhão’s PROVITA program. She severed all contact with family, friends, and her four adult children to comply with program rules. She lost access to farmland where she grew rice, beans, fruits, and other crops. Despite the trauma, she has chosen to keep her name and continues to receive psychological support.

The case drew national and international attention. The NGO Justiça Global reported it to the Organization of American States. Despite multiple complaints from Raimundo—including a formal report filed four months before his death warning of an assassination plot—no investigations were conducted, according to sources who spoke to Mongabay.

Today, Maria’s survival reflects the state’s failure to protect environmental defenders and prosecute those responsible for socio-environmental crimes in Brazil.

#EnvironmentalCrimes #Maranhão #Brazil #LandConflict #EnvironmentalDefender #RaimundoDosSantosRodrigues #PROVITA #ICMBio