FEMALE campaigners are set to protest against Brazilian club Boa Esporte after they signed murderer Bruno Fernandes de Souza on Monday.

Bruno has served seven years of a 21-year sentence after he and his friends tortured and strangled the mother of his child to death, Eliza Samudio, before cutting her up and feeding her to his Rottweiler dogs.

Samudio sued the goalkeeper in 2010 over support for their child, with Bruno believing that the lawsuit could scupper a potential move to AC Milan.

Bruno was released last month pending an appeal, despite admitting to his part in the killing of Samudio, and was told he could await the verdict of his appeal at home.

He has since signed to a second-division club, much to the anger and horror of women in Brazil.

“Women are outraged and so are the general public. It is as if he had gone unpunished,” wrote Djamila Ribeiro, a political philosopher and feminist activist, on the UOL website.

“We protest both against this contract and against the willingness of the team and its sponsors to have their images linked to feminicide,” the Popular Feminist Front of Varginha wrote on its Facebook page.

“A woman-killer must not be allowed a life acclaimed by the media. Bruno is no longer just a goalkeeper; his notoriety reflects the ease with which a woman’s life is forgotten in the interests of a sporting career.”

Three sponsors — Nutrends Nutrition, CardioCenter and Magsul — have refused to be associated with Boa Esporte in the future while fans are planning to boycott the club while Bruno plays for them.

However, the club’s president believes that the goalkeeper has been punished enough, having served only a third of his sentence behind bars, and that it is “part of the company’s social obligation [to] society in co-operating with the recovery of a human being.”