Suspect confesses to killing missing men
TABATINGA, Brazil — A fisherman confessed to killing a British journalist and a Brazilian expert on Indigenous peoples deep in the Amazon and then showed authorities where he had hid their bodies, Brazilian federal police said Wednesday. It was a grim breakthrough in the 10-day search for the missing men that has transfixed Brazil and provoked international outrage.
The police said they found human remains buried about 2 miles into the rain forest and were now working to identify them. They expect them to be the bodies of Dom Phillips, a freelance reporter for the Guardian, and Bruno Araújo Pereira, a former government official who worked in the area to combat illegal fishing and mining.
Brazilian federal police had arrested two brothers, Amarildo and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, in connection to the men’s disappearance. On Wednesday, they said that Amarildo had confessed and that they were seeking an additional suspect. They have not yet charged the men.
The disappearances are a particularly dark chapter in the recent bloody history of the Amazon. Phillips had dedicated much of his career to telling the stories of the conflict that has ravaged the rain forest, while Pereira spent years trying to protect the Indigenous tribes and the environment amid that strife. It now appears that work turned deadly for them, signaling the lengths that people will go to illegally exploit the rain forest.
“This tragic outcome puts an end to the anguish of not knowing Dom and Bruno’s whereabouts,” Alessandra Sampaio, Phillips’ wife, said in a statement. “Today, we also begin our quest for justice.”
Phillips had gone to the Javari Valley Indigenous reservation to interview Indigenous patrol teams that have cracked down on illegal fishing and hunting there. Pereira helped create those patrols in response to the increasing absence of a government presence in the area under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro. Phillips was working on a book during the trip, and the two men were headed home when they vanished.
Witnesses saw the de Oliveira brothers in a boat behind Phillips and Pereira just before they were last seen, according to investigative documents from Brazilian federal police viewed by the New York Times.
Pereira’s work with the patrols had drawn him threats from illegal fishermen and hunters, including from Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, according to the documents. Univaja, a local association of Indigenous groups that helped organize the patrols, said Amarildo also showed a gun to a group that included Pereira and Phillips the day before they disappeared.
Brazil has faced mounting international pressure to step up its response to the disappearance of the two men. In the days after they went missing, politicians, Indigenous groups and journalists criticized the government for moving too slowly to mobilize search teams, prompting Bolsonaro to defend their efforts in front of other world leaders at an international summit in Los Angeles.