The Brazilian Justice ordered this Friday the arrest of a third suspect for the murders of British journalist Dom Phillips57, and the Brazilian indigenous leader Bruno Pereira41, who disappeared on June 5 in a remote region of the Amazon, where they had traveled to collect information for a book about the threats suffered by the Indians of that place.
This is a man identified as Jefferson da Silva Limaknown as “Pelado da Dinha”, who is accused of having been an accomplice of the brothers Amarildo and Oseney da Costa Oliveira, who confessed to having killed and dismembered the two victims.
The arrest was ordered shortly after the Federal Police confirmed that some of the mortal remains found on Wednesday in the Amazon correspond to the journalist Phillips, while it is still being investigated whether the other remains belong to Pereira.
The new arrest was ordered by a regional criminal court in Atalaia do Norte, a municipality in the state of Amazonas. Nevertheless, da Silva Lima has not yet been locatedso already he is considered a fugitiveaccording to the Federal Police.
The Federal Police of Brazil takes away one of the suspects of killing the journalist and the indigenist. Reuters photo.
“The Federal Police and the Civil Police continue to join forces in locating and arresting the fugitive element,” the agency added in a statement in which they requested help from people who have information about his whereabouts.
As they remarked, the investigations “point to the fact that the executors acted alone,” thus ruling out the alleged participation of criminal organizations in the crime or that the murderers acted under the command of a third party.
However, this hypothesis was refuted by the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Vale de Javari (Univaja), which argued that “the degree of cruelty used in the practice of the crime shows that Pereira and Phillips crossed the path of a powerful criminal organization that He tried at all costs to cover his tracks.
Phillips was a journalist who had lived in Brazil for 15 years, where he collaborated with various international media, such as the Financial Times, The New York Times Y Washington Postamong others, and is working on research for a book about the threats suffered by indigenous communities in the Amazon.
Dom Phillips had lived in Brazil since 2007. Photo: Joao Laet / AFP.
Double crime in the Amazon: the case and the identification of the remains
The identification of the remains of the collaborator of the English newspaper Guardian It was possible thanks to “a legal dentistry examination combined with forensic anthropology” carried out by experts from the Federal Police, who are still working to try to establish whether other remains that were found correspond to the indigenist.
Phillips and Araújo Pereira had been missing since June 5 and had been seen for the last time when they were navigating a river in the Javari Valley region, in a remote area of the Brazilian Amazon bordering Colombia and Peru.
The Brazilian indigenista Bruno Araújo Pereira. Photo: EFE
The two brothers arrested for the crime are fishermen and had already been reprimanded by Araújo Pereira for fishing in areas under the jurisdiction of indigenous reserves, which is prohibited.
One of the prisoners confessed to the crime and led the authorities to the place where he buried the bodies of his victims, located about 3 kilometers into the jungle from the river where he intercepted and killed them.
Pereira had received threats on several occasions for his complaints against organizations engaged in drug trafficking, logging, illegal fishing and hunting in the Vale de Javari indigenous reserves.
The death of Phillips, 57, and Araújo, 41, has generated a worldwide shock and exposed the threats surrounding the jungle and the indigenous people of the Amazon.
With information from EFE.
