Rio De Janeiro - Landless leaders yesterday slammed the results of a trial in one of Brazil's bloodiest land disputes, which ended with murder convictions for three policemen but the acquittal of a senior officer and eight other policemen.
"In this massacre, impunity reigned again," Mr Antonio Canutu, a director of the Pastoral Land Commission, said. "It seems nobody is responsible for the murder of most of the peasants that day." Two rural squatters were also found guilty of murder in the 1995 Corumbiara massacre in which nine peasants and two policemen died during a land dispute.