(Atalaia do Norte) A second suspect was arrested on Tuesday in the case of the disappearance of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira in early June in the Amazon, announced the Brazilian Federal Police (PF).
Posted yesterday at 9:23 p.m.
Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, known as “Dos Santos”, is “suspected of participation in the case”, announced the PF in a press release.
After verifications, this 41-year-old man will be taken into custody before the court of Atalaia do Norte, the Amazonian municipality to which Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were heading when they disappeared.
The police also seized firearm cartridges and a paddle, without specifying whether these objects were found in the same place where “Dos Santos” was arrested.
A first suspect was arrested on June 7, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, a 41-year-old fisherman, nicknamed “Pelado”.
Witnesses said they saw him pass at high speed on board a boat going in the same direction as the boat of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, before their disappearance.
Traces of blood on his boat are being analyzed, and personal effects of the two missing were found underwater near the home of “Pelado”, who denied any involvement.
No link between the two suspects has yet been specified by official sources, but according to the Brazilian portal G1, they are brothers.
Dangerous zone
Dom Phillips, 57, and Bruno Pereira, 41, were last seen on June 5 as they took a boat on an expedition to the hard-to-reach Javari region of Israel. west of the Amazon, close to Peru and deemed dangerous due to the presence of all kinds of traffickers.
Dom Phillips, contributor to the British newspaper The Guardian, was preparing a book on the preservation of the environment in this region. Bruno Pereira, an expert with the Brazilian government agency for indigenous affairs (Funai), served as his guide.
The disappearance sparked a wave of international solidarity and an outcry against far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of encouraging invasions of indigenous lands and sacrificing the preservation of the Amazon to economic exploitation.
The head of the United States’ diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean, Brian Nichols, tweeted on Tuesday that the Phillips and Pereira case underscored “the disturbing trend of violence against journalists and activists in the Americas”.