RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- A Venezuelan biologist whose video of mass dolphin killings bolstered support for an American ban on tuna but led to criminal charges against him has fled to Brazil.
Aiser Agudo had been in hiding for two years before slipping out of Venezuela last month on a Caribbean cruise ship, helped by an American couple he would not name. He landed on the island of Aruba on February 28. A few days later, his two daughters arrived, and he fled to Brazil with Saida Elina, 1, and Saida Esther, 6.News of his arrival was embargoed until Sunday, so Agudo's request for refugee status could be presented to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. It could take a month before the biologist wins the refugee status that would allow him to ask for political asylum in Brazil. Agudo said Venezuelan authorities wanted to "suffocate" protests against the killing of dolphins that takes place off Venezuela's eastern coast.
The biologist documented his charges of the slaughter in a six-minute video filmed on Venezuela's eastern Paria peninsula in 1993. He estimated at least 12 dolphins a month were killed by every fisherman on the country's eastern coast. The indiscriminate killing led the United States to impose an embargo on Venezuelan tuna.
Dolphins are found along with schools of tuna and are easily trapped and killed in nets. The meat is then used to lure sharks, which are widely eaten in Venezuela.
In 1994, Agudo and fellow biologist Aldemiro Romero were charged with "ecological crimes," and warrants were issued for their arrest. Romero fled to Miami but Agudo went into hiding. Agudo's wife, Saida Josefina Blonder, died of a heart attack last April while the family was in hiding at a rural site far from doctors, Jair Krischke of the Brazilian Movement For Justice and Human Rights said Sunday.