SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A court in Brazil has  sentenced a rancher to 30 years in prison for ordering the  murder in 2005 of US-born nun Dorothy Stang, who lived in the  Amazon region and opposed the destruction of the rain forest.

Vitalmiro Moura, 39, was given the maximum sentence late Monday after a jury in the Amazon port city of Belem found him  guilty of hiring a gunman to kill 73-year-old Stang, who was  opposing him in a land dispute in the rain forest.

Stang, an Ohio native, had for more than 20 years helped  peasants threatened by loggers and ranchers and fought against  deforestation. The much-delayed process of convicting her  killers became a test of Brazil’s ability to tackle widespread  impunity in the region.

Moura had received the same sentence previously but it was  overturned in 2008, a decision that President Luiz Inacio Lula  da Silva called a “stain” on Brazil’s image abroad.

A retrial was ordered after it was determined that jurors  had ignored evidence pointing to Moura’s guilt in reaching  their verdict.

Stang was shot six times in February 2005 as she held her  Bible and was left lying in the mud in the town of Anapu in  Para, a frontier state where loggers and ranchers have  deforested huge swaths of the world’s biggest rain forest.

Her murder became a symbol of the often-violent conflicts  over natural re-sources in the vast Amazon region.

‘Far from the end‘

The Land Pastoral Commission, which monitors conflicts over  land in Brazil, says 365 people were murdered in such disputes  between 1999 and 2008.

Commission spokeswoman Cristiane Passos welcomed the  judgment but said the government and justice system need to pay  more attention to violent conflicts over land as the problem  still claims many lives.

“It’s still far from the end of the violence,” Passos said.  “There have been many very similar cases (to Stang’s). We say  these regions, like Para and Amazonas, are lawless, far as they  are from the eye of the justice system,” she said.

“The practice of death threats still continues,” she said.

Regivaldo Galvao, another rancher who is accused of acting  as Moura’s accomplice in ordering Stang’s murder, is due to  stand trial starting April 30.

Gunman Raifran das Neves Sales was sentenced in Belem in  December 2005 to 27 years in prison. Another man, Clodoaldo  Carlos Batista, was given a 17-year sentence for helping him. A  third man, Amair Feijoli da Cunha, was convicted in 2006 for  serving as an intermediary between the gunman and local  ranchers.