Peruvian police on Monday captured one of the killers of four Indigenous Amazon land defenders who were murdered protecting their territories from illegal loggers, police sources said.The four leaders of the Ashaninka people -- a group from a remote area along the border between Brazil and Peru -- were killed in front of members of their community on September 1, 2014.
Edwin Chota, Jorge Rios, Leoncio Quintisima and Francisco Pinedo were "murdered by presumed illegal loggers for defending their land," Peru's main Indigenous organization, AIDESEP, said at the time.
In 2024, Jose Carlos Estrada, Hugo Soria and brothers Josimar and Segundo Atachi were sentenced to 28 years and three months in prison for the murders, but all four were fugitives at the time of the ruling.
Estrada, 61, was arrested in the eastern Ucayali region on Monday, a local police spokesperson told AFP.
The murders unleashed a wave of criticism against Peruvian authorities, who were accused of not doing enough to protect Indigenous leaders and anti-deforestation activists.
Chota's defense of the Amazon rainforests -- the most biodiverse region in the world -- earned international recognition.
According to the NGO Global Witness, at least 54 land and environmental defenders have been killed in Peru since 2012, of whom more than half belonged to Indigenous groups.
