Brazilian police on a remote Amazon river island have arrested a man involved in the murder of round-the-world sailor Sir Peter Blake in 2001.



José Irandir Cardoso had been a fugitive for the last 16 years, after escaping from prison in 2002. He was captured by police during a routine stop-and-search in the town of Breves, on the island of Marajó at the mouth of the Amazon river, in the Amazon state of Pará.

Sir Peter Blake, who was murdered in Brazil in 2001. Photograph: David Giles/EPA

“He has been on the run since then, and now he is in jail in Breves at the disposition of the authorities,” Walrimar Santos, a police spokesman, told the Guardian. Irandir Cardoso was using his brother’s identity card, Santos added.

Blake, who at the time was known as the world’s greatest sailor, was shot and killed by pirates in a night time robbery on his boat moored in Macapá, the capital of the neighbouring state of Amapá.

He had won the world’s main bluewater races, including the Americas cup, and was touring ecologically important areas to raise awareness of the environment.



Blake – who had been appointed a goodwill ambassador of the United Nation’s environment programme – was with 14 crew, including his daughter Sarah Jane, when an armed gang of pirates boarded his Seamaster yacht wearing motorcycle helmets. Blake pulled a gun and fired a shot but was killed in the ensuing shootout.

Irandir Cardoso was one of the gang of six sentenced for the killing in 2002 but had been on the run since then. It was not clear how he had managed to escape from prison. Home visits and day release are common in Brazil’s overcrowded prison system.

“Police in the town of Breves stopped him in the street. He had a suspicious attitude, and the police distrusted him,” Santos said. “He presented a document, they suspected it could be false, took him to the station to check it out. There, during the check, they identified him as Jose Irandir [Cardoso] who escaped from the state of Amapá where he was jailed, condemned for the [murder of the] sailor.”

“It was a surprise,” said Lieutenant Felipe Lopes, who led the group of arresting officers. “We perceived how nervous he was. After, we realised that the photo on his identify card had been glued on. After this he confessed everything … that he was on the run from the Amapá penitentiary system.”

Blake, who was born in Auckland, New Zealand, was 53 at the time of his death.

