Peru court upholds 28-year jail term for killers of Indigenous leaders

LIMA - A Peruvian court this week handed down jail sentences of 28 years each to four illegal loggers for the murder of four Indigenous leaders, 11 years after the crime took place in a remote part of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest.

The sentencing marks a rare legal victory for crimes committed in the Amazon against Indigenous peoples, among them the prominent anti-logging campaigner Edwin Chota.

Judges at an appeals court in Pucallpa, a city in the Amazon, upheld a conviction for aggravated homicide against the brothers Segundo and Josimar Atachi Félix, the material authors of the crime, and the indirect perpetrators, illegal loggers José Estrada and Hugo Flores.

They each received sentences of 28 years and three months in prison.

The sentencing marks a milestone in a decade-long fight for justice after the murder of Ashéninka leaders Edwin Chota, Jorge Ríos Pérez, Leoncio Quintisima Meléndez and Francisco Pinedo Ramírez in September 2014.

They came from the Alto Tamaya-Saweto native community, near Peru's Amazon border with Brazil in Ucayali region.

The men were ambushed as they walked to attend an assembly to discuss strategies to combat illegal logging in Apiwtza, home to an Indigenous community in neighbouring Brazil. They were then tortured and shot dead.

"This sets a precedent for other cases of Indigenous defenders and sends a message of resistance and hope in the face of impunity," said Rocío Trujillo, Edwin Chota's lawyer.

But that none of the four sentenced men have been detained and all remain at large.

"After 11 years of pain and waiting, today we feel that progress has been made toward achieving justice," said Ergilia Rengifo López, widow of Jorge Ríos, who attended the hearing.

"Now we hope that the convicted will serve the sentence."

Lawyers, government ministers and Indigenous organisations said the verdict set a legal precedent in Peru, a country where crimes against environmental and land defenders often go unpunished.

Amazon leaders have been threatened and murdered by organised crime groups in Peru for defending their land against illegal logging and gold mining that drives deforestation.

"This sentence paves the way for other cases of Indigenous brothers who have been killed defending their territories," said Miguel Guimaraes, vice president of AIDESEP, an umbrella group for Peru's Indigenous Amazon organisations.

More than 35 environmental defenders have been killed in Peru since 2013 for defending their territory, he said.

Peru's Deputy Minister of Interculturality Percy Barranzuela said the ruling "sets a precedent in the country's history" and is "an act of justice for the Ashéninka leaders".

"It does not erase the pain, but it strengthens the fight against impunity and calls on us to build a more just and intercultural state," Barranzuela said.

Chota and the other Indigenous leaders had been waging a long battle against illegal loggers, who were decimating trees in his community's 78,000 hectare territory.

He had been completing the steps to get a land title for Alto Tamaya-Saweto, which was finally granted in April 2015, seven months after his murder along with his three companions.

(Reporting by Dan Collyns Editing by Anastasia Moloney and Jon Hemming.)