VITORIA, Brazil -- A leader of Brazil's land reform movement was acquitted
                  Wednesday in a retrial on murder charges stemming from a failed attempt to
                  occupy a farm in 1989.

                  The trial had focused attention on the plight of the country's poor farm workers
                  and the verdict was greeted with relief by the Brazilian government after the first
                  trial had drawn international criticism of the country's legal system.

                  Jose Rainha Jr., the leader of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST),
                  was charged with being the mastermind behind the killing of a landowner and a
                  police officer during a botched attempt to take over a farm in 1989.

                  Some 5,000 MST supporters celebrated the verdict and waved the movement's
                  trademark red flags outside the courthouse in Vitoria, the capital of the coastal
                  state of Espirito Santo. Rainha urged them to continue the fight for land reform.

                  "This shows that Brazil is increasingly less in the hands of the big landowners
                  and that more and more justice is being made," Land Reform Minister Raul
                  Jungmann told CBN Radio.

                  Claims the conviction was politically motivated

                  The 1997 conviction sparked criticism that the case was a politically motivated
                  attack on the 15-year-old MST, a group with Marxist fundamentals that
                  organizes poor families to squat on unused land and fight for titles in court.

                  Between the two trials, the MST rallied support from grass-roots groups and
                  international organizations and beefed up the defense team -- a combined effort
                  which observers said was crucial to overturn the conviction.

                  "They had thousands of people there for three days, people from abroad, the
                  international press, embassies," said Maria Luisa Mendonca, director of Global
                  Justice Center in Rio de Janeiro. "There was also much organizing on the
                  Internet."

                  Another pivotal point of the trial was the transfer of the case to the state capital
                  from the town where the murders and the first trial occurred.

                  Rights groups say previous trial riddled with errors

                  Human rights groups say Rainha's previous trial was riddled with procedural
                  errors. At least four members of the seven-man jury were thought to be friends
                  of the dead landowner.

                  At his first trial, Rainha was convicted and sentenced to 26 years in prison. All
                  sentences of more than 20 years in Brazil are subject to an automatic retrial,
                  which Rainha awaited in liberty.

                                               But for the retrial, the jury of six men
                                               and one woman took only 40 minutes to
                                               acquit Rainha by a vote of 4-3 in the
                                               killing of farm owner Jose Machado
                                               Neto and an off-duty policeman. In
                                               Brazil, a majority of the jury is all that is
                                               needed to acquit or convict.

                                               "The truth is like divine justice," Rainha
                                               said after the verdict was handed down.
                                               "It may take a while to arrive but it
                                               always emerges."

                                               Prosecutors said they would file an
                  appeal on the grounds that defense witnesses had communicated with each other
                  during the trial.

                  During the attempted takeover of the farm in 1989, Machado and several hired
                  gunmen opened fire on the invaders, according to movement members. Machado
                  and one of the gunmen, an off-duty policeman, were killed and four squatters
                  were wounded.

                  Rainha accused of being 'intellectual author' of murders

                  Rainha was not accused of pulling the trigger, but of being the "intellectual
                  author" of the twin murders. The nine men accused of firing on the victims
                  remain at large.

                  At the first trial, Rainha was convicted even though prosecutors produced no
                  witnesses and the sworn depositions contained just vague descriptions of the
                  defendant.

                  Prosecutors, who described Rainha as a rabble-rouser who incited the rural
                  workers to violence, relied mainly on sworn statements from neighbors and
                  testimony from people who claimed they had "heard" Rainha was involved.

                  "Hitler never actually killed anyone, but he was responsible for the deaths of
                  millions of people. Jose Rainha is the Brazilian Hitler," assistant prosecutor
                  Jucilande Borges said in his closing statement to the jury.

                  The case against Rainha hinged on the testimony of Jose Guimaraes, the
                  prosecution's star witness, who said he drove Rainha and some armed men to
                  the farm.

                  The defense, headed by former Supreme Court judge Evandro Lins e Silva,
                  presented witnesses who corroborated Rainha's testimony that he was away in
                  the northeastern state of Ceara on the day of the shootings.

                  The retrial, which began Monday, refocused attention on the often bloody
                  disputes over land which have cost more than 1,000 lives in Brazil during the
                  past decade.

                  Brazil has one of the worst land distribution ratios in the world, with about half
                  of all arable land in the hands of about 2 percent of the population.

                  Brazil's justice system was also the target of criticism when police were
                  acquitted last year of massacring 19 peasants in the Amazon state of Para in
                  1996.