Peruvian police have captured fugitive businessman Hugo Soria Flores in Manantay over the 2014 murders of four Ashaninka indigenous leaders.
The 52-year-old was arrested 12 years after ordering the fatal shootings of environmental defenders Edwin Chota, Jorge Rios, Francisco Pinedo, and Leoncio Quintisima in the Amazon rainforest.
The Superior Court of Justice of Ucayali sentenced Soria Flores in August 2025 to 28 years and three months in prison for qualified homicide as an indirect author. He was placed on the Peruvian Ministry of the Interior's reward list, with authorities offering 50,000 soles for information leading to his arrest.
Officers from the Ucayali Regional Police located Soria Flores in the district of Manantay, situated in eastern Peru's Amazonian Ucayali region. An intelligence team comprising one officer and eight sub-officers carried out the Tuesday operation before handing Soria Flores over to judicial authorities.
Saweto murders and co-conspirators
Soria Flores is the second businessman apprehended in connection with the Saweto killings. Authorities previously arrested co-conspirator Jose Carlos Estrada Huayta in May 2026 after judicial rulings established that both men ordered the executions.
According to court findings corroborated by a protected witness, gunmen shot the four Ashaninka leaders on September 1, 2014. The victims belonged to the Alto Tamaya-Saweto community, a remote indigenous settlement located near Peru's border with Brazil where local leaders fought to protect ancestral lands from illegal loggers.
Three men accused of carrying out the physical killings remain fugitives. Brothers Segundo Atachi Felix and Josimar Atachi Felix were sentenced to 28 years and three months in prison, but police have not located them. The third alleged hitman, Eurico Mapes Gomes, never appeared before Peruvian courts.
Legal precedent and community response
The Saweto case marks the first time the Peruvian judicial system has delivered a criminal conviction for the murder of environmental defenders in the country's Amazon region. Rainforest activists across South America have long faced violence from illegal extraction networks.
Lita Rojas, Ergilia Rengifo, Julia Perez, and Lina Rojas Ruiz, the widows of the four slain leaders, have spearheaded a campaign for justice, financial reparation, and territorial protection. Following the arrest, the widows said that justice was finally breaking through after years of legal struggle.
