As the Chupacabras phenomenon goes into decline, the hottest UFO story of the moment from South America is the rumour that a number of aliens have been recovered from a crashed UFO by military authorities in Brazil followed by a bungled cover-up. Different accounts have proliferated (mainly through the Internet) but details are emerging of an event that might well match the Roswell case in its complexity, scale and importance.

John Carpenter, director of MUFON Southwest and a founding member of ISCNI told that he was impressed by what he has learned so far.;There are at least 35 first-hand witnesses to the presence of the strange beings. This includes audiotaped interviews with several military participants. There is the possibility of a UFO crash, but there is little doubt about the existence of five or six strange beings resembling a cross between the Little Greys and the Chupacabras. Some were shot or died, others captured alive,; he said.

According to a press release dated 9 June -- issued by A. J. Gevaerd, editor of a UFO magazine and president of the Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research -- the story begins on the afternoon of 20 January this year near the city of Varginha, in the Central Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, when three young girls observed a strange creature in a field near their home. From a few meters away, they saw the creature squatting behind an old garage, apparently gasping in pain. When it made a slight movement, they fled as though from the devil. Although the girls saw no UFO, an elderly couple did claim later to have seen, earlier that morning, a grey, submarine-like object that silently skimmed the ground.

The girls -- two sisters and a friend -- were interviewed by Dr Ubiraja Franco Rodrigues and Vitorio Pacaccini, two veteran ufologists who happened to live in the vicinity. They were quickly convinced by the description given by the unsophisticated witnesses that it was extraterrestrial. Its hairless body was not more than five feet tall and dark brown, as though it had oil on its skin. It had two large, red, pupil-less eyes, a small mouth and nose and a big, brown head with three rather rounded horns. It also smelled; the mother of the sisters testifying to the strange odour that still lingered at the site when she visited it.

Rodrigues and Pacaccini located other residents of Varginha who had seen strange beings in the area and, at the same time, unusually intense military activity. A military informant told them that the town Fire Department had been asked, early that morning, to capture a strange animal. On seeing it, they called the nearest army base, the Escola Sargentos de Armas in the neighbouring city of Tres Coracoes. Using nets, the unknown creature was finally caught, placed in a box and driven away on an army truck.

The commander, Lieutenant Colonel Olimpio Wanderley Santos, then declared it a "secret operation". Nevertheless, the investigators were able to gather testimony from several military personnel. They spoke of the capture of a second creature -- possibly the one seen by the girls -- later that night. This second creature, apparently similar to the first, was taken to the Regional General Hospital of Varginha for a few hours before being transferred to the better equipped Humanitas Hospital. After two days, according to the story, the creature died and was removed at night by 'S2' military intelligence officers. Anyone who saw the creature, it seems, was warned not to talk, especially to the press and UFO researchers.

The intrepid investigators somehow learned that the aliens (dead or alive) were taken to a military facility in Campinas in the state of Sao Paulo, about 200 miles from Varginha. It is also alleged that one was autopsied at the University of Campinas by Dr Badan Palhares, a distinguished pathologist who came to the world's attention, about 10 years ago, for his autopsy on the infamous Nazi doctor Mengele. Inevitably, Palhares and other named authorities have strenuously denied any involvement in such an affair.

Press and TV journalists have joined ufologists in a six-month-long hunt for information about the fate of the two aliens, giving full scope for conspiracy theorists and resulting in regular revisions of the number of witnesses and their stories, including the number of aliens. The latest version claims that five ETs were flushed out of hiding in the Jardim Andere, a park on the north side of Varginha.

As luck would have it, a grand opportunity to go public came with the International Conference on UFOs, sponsored by Gevaerd's group and held in Curitiba, in Parana state, Brazil, over the period 4-9 June. It was attended by American ufologists Stanton Friedman, John Carpenter, abductee Travis Walton, and Graham Birdsall, editor of Britain's UFO Magazine, who were all granted a special meeting with the investigators of the Varginha alien-recovery story. Rodrigues and Pacaccini marshalled an impressive array of first-hand accounts from eye-witnesses, including four soldiers who were with the truck convoy that allegedly ferried the aliens to Campinas and on to Sao Paulo. Carpenter says he and his colleagues were highly impressed.

A press briefing was held on 5 June, the second day of the conference. Claudeia Covo, an engineer and president of the Instituto Nacional de Investigacoes de Fenomenos Aerospaciais (INFA), outlined the alleged Varginha retrieval, describing it as "certainly the most extraordinary thing we have ever heard about, and we have lots of reports of UFO apparitions." He added: "It was a complex operation involving military personnel as well as civilians and resulted in the capture of unidentified biological creatures."

On Sunday, 16 June, the TV show Programma de Domingo broadcast the story to the nation, openly identifying some of the military and civilian officials and interviewing some of the witnesses involved. Furious at the leaks from his command, General Lima confined his men to barracks and a number of them to the guardhouse. "What the ufologists say is ridiculous", he fumed. A spokesman for the East Military Area, Colonel Luiz Cesario da Silveira Leite, denies that any military personnel helped capture an alien. "We worry about national and international beings but only if they are terrestrials."

One source, Adilson Usier Leite, the administrator of the Hospital Regional, admitted that there was indeed an unusual commotion in the hospital over the period in question, but explained it as due to the chaos that ensued when the body of a young man who had died in custody was exhumed and brought in for X-ray at the same time as the arrival of new equipment for the first heart transplant in Varginha. The ufologists scoff at this.The case is developing the usual mythology: according to Luiza Helena, the mother of two of the girls, she was offered a large amount of cash by four unidentified men in cream-coloured Armani suits if her daughters would deny the story. "They also said they would come back, but we can't hide the truth," she said. It is also believed that John Mack, the professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has specialised in treating abductees, came to Varginha to interview the girls. "Mack told me he would stake his career and his license on those three girls being truthful," Carpenter told Michael Lindemann, director of ISCNI.

There are even rumours of US involvement in the recovery, including the allegation that NORAD had tracked the craft. "By now, it is very likely that the body has already been flown from Brazil to the USA," said Pacaccini.

In recent years, Brazil has been a hotbed of UFO-related rumours. Of particular concern were the claims made by some ufologists of animal and even human vampiric mutilations -- elsewhere attributed to the Chupacabras -- based on evidence in police files. Meanwhile, according to Gevaerd, southern Minas Gerais, the home state of Varginha, is enduring one of the biggest UFO waves ever recorded, with numerous reports of close observations, landings and contact.

FT cannot vouch for the authenticity of this event, but it has attracted much attention and we all want to know what really happened. Historically, investigation rarely clears up a UFO mystery, so don't expect too much from this one as more information, real and fanciful, is disclosed.