A Brazilian court has sentenced four of the leaders of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) to 10 years of imprisonment.

The MST activists were found guilty of arson, robbery and other charges related to a 2000 land invasion at the Santana de Alcidia ranch in Sao Paulo state, the court ruled on Friday.

However, of the four condemned, only Cledson Mendes da Silva is in police custody.

Jose Rainha, the most famous of the four, was arrested in 2002, but was released by the country's Supreme Court.

A former ally of Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Rainha lives in Pontal de Paranapanema.

Rainha was charged but aquitted in connection with two murders, which took place during a 1989 land invasion. In the 1980s, he marched alongside Lula da Silva, when both were union leaders fighting Brazil's military government.

Brazil has one of the most skewed land distributions in the world, with the richest 20 percent controlling 90 percent of the land, and the poorest 40 percent cooped up on just one percent.

Source: Xinhua