A LETTER FROM MARC VAN ROOSMALEN

On the 25th of November 2008 the Supreme Court in Brasilia acquitted me from all former charges of biopiracy for which I got convicted to 14+ years in a public jail and a fine to the amount of 155.000 Reais (=60.000 Euro). One month after conditional release from a two-month detention in a Manaus public jail I inaugurated this website so beautifully designed and continuously updated by my friend Mason Fischer. I here wish to express my sincere gratitude to my worldwide audience. Many thanks to all the people that have expressed in all possible ways their concern about what happened to me. You have enormously contributed to have me and my wife survive this ordeal.

There are some very special and precious people who I consider the real heroes of my story. First of all, Antonia Vivian Ijuma Silva Garcia, my young wife, direct Inca descendant from the Cuzco region in Peru, who, driven by our true love for one another, turned into my life-line with the sane world during my residence in hell. I owe her to have chosen the best lawyer in town, Creuza B. Cohen. Supported by a legal team of four more lawyers – Ana Lúcia Costa e Silva, her son Diego Américo, Antônio Coimbra and David Neves, Creuza entered on the 19th of June 2007 with an appeal and won on the 7th of August 2007 a habeas corpus at the Supreme Court in Brasilia. Based on that appeal on the 25th of November of 2008 I got fully acquitted from the charges of biopiracy and robbing the country from a few tons of scaffolding that were imported duty-free in 1993 by the late Nick Gordon, cameraman under contract of the British company Survival Anglia Ltd. That decision shows that in the end there is justice in Brazil, as I was originally convicted to over 14 years of imprisonment in a public jail on alleged “crimes against nature”.

Again, I would like to thank everybody who has shown solidarity with my situation. Now, I would like to go back to my work - describing new creatures from the Amazon – the biodiversity research in the Brazilian Amazon I was impeded to conduct for over six years. Back to Paradise – that never-ending story which to some extent I have tried to write down in my popular-scientific book entitled: “Barefoot through the Amazon – On the Path of Evolution”. It came out in Dutch on the 25th of November 2008 – the same day as my victory in court was announced, which should be considered a dark day in the life of biopiracy witchhunters and other advocates and stakeholders in the lucrative destruction of the great Amazonian rainforest. It is expected to be soon published in other languages such as English, German, Portuguese, French and Spanish.

Sincerely – Marc G.M. van Roosmalen