BRAZIL: SUSPECT CONFESSES TO KILLING PAIR
A federal police investigator said Wednesday night a suspect confessed to fatally shooting an Indigenous expert and a journalist in a remote part of the Amazon and took officers to where the bodies were buried.
Police said at a news conference in the Amazon city of Manaus that the prime suspect in the case confessed Tuesday night and detailed what happened to the pair who went missing
June 5. They said other arrests would be made soon in the case, but gave no details.
The federal investigator, Eduardo Alexandre Fontes, said Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, 41, nicknamed Pelado, told officers he used a firearm to kill Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira of Brazil and freelance reporter Dom Phillips of Britain.
“We would have no way of getting to that spot quickly without the confession,” Torres said of the place where police recovered human remains Wednesday after being led there by Pelado.
Torres said the remains are expected to be identified within days, and if confirmed as the missing men, “will be returned to the families of the two.”
“We found the bodies three kilometers (nearly two miles) into the woods,” the investigator said, adding that rescue teams traveled about one hour and forty minutes on the river and 25 more into the woods to reach the burial spot.
Pelado’s family had said previously that he denied any wrongdoing and claimed police tortured him to try to get a confession.
Another officer, Guilherme Torres of the Amazonas state police, said the missing men’s boat had not been found yet but police knew the area where it purportedly was hidden by those involved.
“They put bags of dirt on the boat so it would sink,” he said. The engine of the boat was removed, according to investigators.
Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen on their boat in a river near the entrance of the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia. That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents.