Day 286 - 24 Oct 96 - Page 16
1 the scenes that McDonald's do not know about or do not want
2 to know about or want to pretend they do not know about,
3 and it just re-emphasises the point that basically
4 Mr. Cesca only knows what he has been told by Mr. Morganti
5 in any event.
6
7 I will not go into Miss Branford's evidence any further,
8 because you are going to read it through. There is
9 obviously a lot of information in there of relevance,
10 almost all of which was not challenged by Mr. Rampton.
11
12 There is one thing I wanted to say, that you made a
13 reference to monitoring the eviction of indigenous people
14 in Gioias State. That is on page 24 and 25. Near San
15 Miguel do Araguais.
16
17 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Which day is this?
18
19 MR. MORRIS: This is Sue Branford, day 251. She said, "I spent
20 a few days with the remnants of the Avacanaweros tribe.
21 I subsequently discovered when I went there they had
22 contracted 'flu. They had actually been rounded up at the
23 ranch and were being held virtual prisoners in a shack."
24 Question, "Where was that?" Answer, "This was in a ranch
25 near San Miguel do Araguais owned by the biggest private
26 bank in Brazil." This was in 1974, 1975. So, it seems
27 that the process of -- well, you can draw your own
28 conclusions from that.
29
30 Can I say something as well about Sue Branford's evidence?
31 Not only was the information that she provided to the court
32 about Gioias based on what she had seen, but, in terms of
33 the impression that you may have got from that evidence, it
34 is something that we had not discussed with her at all.
35 Because of the lateness of the information that we got from
36 McDonald's she had turned up in court and it just suddenly
37 came out. So, obviously, in this case we have already said
38 that the general point that we believe McDonald's witnesses
39 are all very well, you know, clerked and briefed and drafts
40 are done of statements, et cetera et cetera. With most of
41 our witnesses we have not had time to meet them or just
42 talk to them on the phone for a short time. But in this
43 case, this was an important area of evidence that was
44 completely spontaneous, and I think it has even greater
45 weight for that very reason.
46
47 So when she says in her evidence that she had seen trucks
48 labelled 'Bordon' going to the slaughter house at Campo
49 Grande from Acre, page 12, line 41 of her evidence, again
50 I emphasise this was the job that she was doing in that
51 area as part of her research; part of her expertise and
52 analysis of the situation was exactly this, analysing the
53 supply routes and the implications of those supply routes
54 for what was really going on and what was impacting upon
55 the Amazon.
56
57 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can you remind me where Acre is?
58
59 MR. MORRIS: Do you remember there was evidence about Acre
60 being one stop past Rondonia.
