Vidal Vega was among last surviving leaders of peasant movement whose land dispute led to president's downfall

Gunmen murdered one of the last surviving leaders of a peasant movement in Paraguay whose land dispute with a politician prompted the end of Fernando Lugo's presidency in June.

Vidal Vega, 48, was hit four times by bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver fired by two unidentified men who sped away on a motorcycle, according to an official report.

A friend, Mario Espinola, said Vega was shot when he stepped outside to feed his farm animals.

Vega was among the public faces of a commission of landless peasants from the settlement of Yby Pyta, which means Red Dirt in their native Guarani language. He had lobbied the government for many years to redistribute some of the ranchland that the Colorado party senator Blas Riquelme began occupying in the 1960s.

Last May the peasants finally lost patience and moved on to the land. A firefight during their eviction on 15 June killed 11 peasants and six police officers, prompting the Colorado party and other leading parties to vote Lugo out of office for allegedly mismanaging the dispute.

Twelve suspects, nearly all of them peasants from Yby Pyta, have been detained since then without formal charges, on suspicion of murdering the officers, seizing property and resisting authority. The prosecutor had six months to develop the case and will present his findings on 16 December.

Vega had been expected to be a witness at the criminal trial, since he was among the few leaders not killed in the clash or jailed afterwards. He was not charged because he was away getting supplies when the violence erupted.

Riquelme, who died of natural causes about a month after the battle in June, occupied the land during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, whose government gave away land for free to anyone willing to put it to productive use. A court in Curuguaty upheld Riquelme's claim to the land years later. Lugo's government later sought to overturn the decision, but the case remains tied up in court.