En af lederne af Brasiliens største indianergruppe blev mejet ned af maskerede mænd og liget smidt på en lastbil efter strid om indtrængende ranchejere, der havde sat sig på indianernes land.
Police in Brazil have arrested 18 people in connection with the brutal killing of an indigenous leader last November, BBC online reports Thursday.
Gunmen shot Nisio Gomes in Mato Grosso do Sul and took away his body, which is still missing. Mr Gomes, 59, led a Guarani group which had returned to its land after being evicted (smidt ud) by ranchers.
The federal police in Ponta Pora, in the southern state of Mato Grosso do Sul, said they had arrested 10 people belonging to a private security firm suspected of having been hired to attack Mr Gomes’s camp.
Another eight people, six of them landowners, were being held on suspicion of masterminding the attack.
The police official said there had been a breakthrough in the investigation into Mr Gomes’s disappearance when two suspects confessed in exchange for a more lenient (mildere) sentence.
The suspects said they worked for a private security firm and described being hired by a group of eight people to murder the indigenous leader.
Members of Nisio Gomes’s Guarani Kaiowa group had all along described how masked gunmen had broken into their camp and shot their leader in the head, chest, arms and legs, before loading his body into a truck.
The Guarani are the largest indigenous group in Brazil, with approximately 46.000 members spread over seven states.
They say they are frequently forced from their ancestral land by farmers, and receive little or no protection from local authorities
