{"id":13605,"date":"2022-06-16T05:57:58","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T12:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13605"},"modified":"2022-06-17T06:03:29","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T13:03:29","slug":"fisherman-admits-to-killing-uk-journalist-and-indigenous-expert-in-amazon-rainforest-el-pais","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=13605","title":{"rendered":"“Fisherman admits to killing UK journalist and indigenous expert in Amazon rainforest”, El Pais"},"content":{"rendered":"

Naiara Galarraga Gort\u00e1zar,\u00a0S\u00e3o Paulo,\u00a0

Brazilian officials made the announcement 10 days after Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira went missing in an area rife with poachers and drug traffickers<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/span>
The British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian indigenous rights advocate Bruno Pereira.RR.SS.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the two fishermen arrested in connection with the disappearance of British journalist Dom Phillips, 57, and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira<\/a>, 41, has confessed to participating in the murder and has led investigators to the place where the remains were buried<\/a>, according to the head of the Federal Police in Amazonas, Eduardo Fontes, who gave a news conference on Wednesday night in Manaus. The remains will be analyzed to confirm their identities. The trail of the pair and their boat was lost on June 5 in one of the most isolated areas of the Brazilian Amazon.<\/p>\n

Phillips, a contributor for The Guardian<\/i>, and Pereira, a longtime advocate for indigenous rights, went missing in Javari Valley, home to the largest concentration of uncontacted indigenous people<\/a> in the world. It is also an area plagued by hunters, poachers, drug traffickers, illegal loggers and miners. Phillips and Pereira disappeared while returning from a guard post manned by indigenous people in a remote part of the jungle where Phillips was interviewing locals for a book.<\/p>\n

The suspects in the deaths are two brothers, Oseney and Amarildo da Costa, both 41 years old. The latter, nicknamed Pelado, was arrested last week on charges of possession of illegal ammunition after his boat was seen chasing the vessel carrying Phillips and Pereira as they were near their destination, the city of Atalaia do Norte. The second brother was arrested on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/span>
Police officers escort Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, one of the two suspects in the deaths of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.BRUNO KELLY (REUTERS)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The police official said that the bodies were buried three kilometers inland in the jungle. The remains will be compared with DNA samples taken from relatives. Once the identities are confirmed, \u201cwe will be able to bring them home and bid them a loving farewell,\u201d said Phillips\u2019 wife, Alessandra Sampaio, in a note in which she also announced: \u201cToday, our quest for justice begins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Families and colleagues of Pereira and Phillips had criticized Brazilian authorities for the delay in launching a large-scale search operation. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had stated that \u201ctwo people on a boat trip in a completely wild area like this \u2013 it\u2019s an adventure that\u2019s not at all advisable. Anything can happen. They could have had an accident or been murdered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pereira was employed for many years by FUNAI (Funda\u00e7\u00e3o Nacional do \u00cdndio or National Indian Foundation), the government agency responsible for protecting the country\u2019s indigenous peoples, and had been repeatedly threatened in the past.<\/p>\n

The indigenous trackers with whom Bruno Pereira had collaborated for years led the search for both missing men, combing the area inch by inch with the police and the Armed Forces. Univaja (the Uni\u00e3o dos Povos do Vale de Javari), which encompasses all the ethnic groups of the valley, issued a statement together with the Apib, which brings together the indigenous organizations of Brazil, and the Observat\u00f3rio dos Povos Indigenas (OPI) in which they qualified this \u201cmurder as one more political crime\u201d which, they say, \u201chas the fingerprints of Bolsonaro and is a consequence of the destructive policy of his government<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naiara Galarraga Gort\u00e1zar,\u00a0S\u00e3o Paulo,\u00a0Jun\u00a016, 2022 Brazilian officials made the announcement 10 days after Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira went missing in an area rife with poachers and drug traffickers The British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian indigenous rights advocate Bruno Pereira.RR.SS. One of the two fishermen arrested in connection with the disappearance of British […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13606,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13605\/revisions\/13606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}