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Brazilian fugitive arrested in Boston area
May 2, 2006

BOSTON --An international fugitive who was convicted of two murders in Brazil, including the killing of an Amazon labor leader, has been apprehended in the Boston area, federal authorities said Tuesday.

Jose Serafim Sales, 40, who is also known as Barrerito, was arrested in Somerville, which borders Boston, on April 25, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Sales was convicted as the triggerman in the Feb. 2, 1991, assassination of Expedito Ribeiro de Souza, president of the Union of Rural Workers of Rio Maria, who was shot twice in the head and once in the back as he left union headquarters.

In 1995, Barrerito was sentenced to 25 years in prison by a court in Belem, a city on the Amazon River. Sales escaped from prison in March 2000.

Sales was also convicted in another murder in the Rio Maria area and is charged with a third murder in Brazil, U.S. authorities said.

Federal agents found Sales in Somerville and arrested him without incident, officials from ICE said. Fingerprints provided by the Brazilian Federal Police matched prints taken from Sales after his arrest, immigration officials said.

"We will not allow the United States to be a safe haven for murderers and human rights violators," Matthew J. Etre, acting Special Agent-in-Charge for ICE in Boston, said in a prepared statement.

Etre said the United States has begun the process to return Sales to Brazil.

Michael Gilhooly, an ICE spokesman, declined to say where Sales was being held or give the address of his arrest, citing department policy.

Sales had been living in the Boston area for about three years, Gilhooly said.

It could not immediately be determined if Sales had a lawyer.