4 Get 14-Year Sentences in Indian Chief’s Killing

Four young men who burned a Brazilian Indian chief to death were each convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to 14 years in prison in what the prosecution and activists said was a victory for indigenous rights.

A judge in Brasilia, the capital, sentenced the men after a jury convicted them. The four were in their late teens when they poured alcohol on Pataxo leader Galdino Jesus dos Santos and set him ablaze as he lay on a bench at a bus stop in 1997. Dos Santos had been in Brasilia to push for legal recognition of his tribe’s traditional lands.