ROME (AFP) - A third man has been arrested in the west African archipelago of Cape Verde in connection with the alleged rape and murder by stoning of two young Italian women, press reports said here.
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A 23-year-old tourist guide named as Sandro Santus Rosario is considered the main perpetrator of the double murder at a remote resort on the island of Sal.
A second suspect was described as a mechanic and the third was thought to have played an indirect role in the killings, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported, citing sources close to the investigation.
The chief of Cape Verde's police force, Oscar Tavares, said the three suspects gave no motives for the crime during their preliminary interrogation although Santus Roasario was thought to have been the jilted lover of one of the victims.
The bodies of the victims were buried under several layers of sand and rocks and would probably not have been found if a third Italian woman had not survived the assault, he told Portugal's Lusa news agency.
"The way the bodies were buried leads us to conclude that the crime was premeditated," Tavares said.
The 17-year-old sole survivor of the attack told police she had been left for dead by the assailants and managed to escape while they went about burying their victims, reports said.
Autopsy results reportedly showed that one of the women was still alive when she was buried.
Cape Verde, an arid former Portuguese colony, is located about 500 miles (800 kilometers) to the west of Senegal's capital, Dakar, in the Atlantic Ocean.
Tourism has become increasingly important for the Cape Verdean economy and has been seen by the government as the driving force behind the country's development over the next few years
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070211/wl_africa_afp/italycapeverdecrime_070211110911
ROME, Feb 11 (Reuters) - One of the two Italian women murdered on the tropical Atlantic island state of Cape Verde last week was buried alive, the Italian honorary consul said on Sunday.
The double murder of the two women, aged 28 and 33, has shocked the people of the archipelago, especially the grisly details given by a third woman who was left for dead but survived to tell how all three were beaten with stones.
"Apparently, one of the two girls was buried when she was still alive because the autopsy found traces of earth in her lungs," Honorary Consul Luigi Zirpoli told Reuters.
According to the survivor, Agnese Paci, 17, all three victims went with a local man, a former boyfriend of one of the women, to have dinner on Thursday night, but instead he drove them to a wood with an accomplice where he beat them with large stones.
Three men have been arrested in connection with the murders, Zirpoli said. "It looks increasingly like this was a crime of passion," he said. One of the victims lived in Cape Verde for part of the year and worked in tourism.
Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony, is an archipelago about 500 km (300 miles) off the coast of Senegal and tourism is a vital part of the economy.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L11822857.htm
Thanks. A lot more info at that link
This is nothing new. When I was in college, people used to go into the woods and get stoned more often than you would think.
That's funny. Stoning is usually a way of public execution. It's not easy to commit a murder that way.