Admits to murdering, chopping up British girl

A Brazilian man, Mohamed D'Ali Carvalho dos Santos, was late Thursday convicted and sentenced to 21 years in prison for murdering and dismembering a British teenager in Brazil last year, media reported.

Mr Santos, 21, was found guilty of killing Cara Marie Burke, 17, in July 2008 after she threatened to reveal his cocaine and crack habit to police and family, Brazilian news websites including Globo and Diario da Manha said.

During his one-day trial in the central Brazilian city of Goiania, Mr Santos himself told the jury how he stabbed Ms Burke in a cocaine-fuelled frenzy and cut up her body.

After hearing that Mr Santos was psychologically disturbed and a drug addict, the jury returned a sentence less than the 30-year maximum term.

It decided that Mr Santos should serve 19 years for the murder itself and another two years for trying to hide the body.

During the trial, Mr Santos told the court he stabbed Ms Burke repeatedly after he rejected a request from the British girl, who shared an apartment with him, for money and she threatened to have a policeman boyfriend confiscate his drug stash and sell it.

"When she had the telephone to her ear, I turned up the volume from the stereo, covered her mouth and began to stab her in the back" with a knife used to cut cocaine he had just put on the table, Santos told judge Jesseir Coelho de Alcantara.

He added that he had been taking drugs for three days leading up to the murder.

"I didn't know what I was doing. It was only afterwards I saw what I did," he said.

Mr Santos said he put Ms Burke's body in the bathroom and took photos with his cell phone that he later sent to friends in Britain with boasts of his act. He then went to an all-night party.

The next day, he bought a five-dollar carving knife and dismembered the body.

"I put the torso in a plastic bag inside a suitcase. The head and limbs I put in plastic bags in another suitcase," Mr Santos said. They were thrown into nearby rivers.

Ms Burke's torso was recognised by a friend in Britain who identified a tattoo in a TV report.

After his arrest, Mr Santos allegedly tried to offer a $35,000-dollar bribe to be let go, the court head.

Mr Santos's defence lawyers admitted their client had committed a "brutal and monstruous crime," but said he deserved leniency in sentencing because he was mentally unbalanced and drug-dependent.

During his trial, Mr Santos was mostly calm, though he laughed occasionally, notably when his aunt talked about lesser crimes he committed while a teenager.

He also testified that, contrary to initial information from detectives, he and Ms Burke were just friends, and not romantically or sexually involved.