Brazil’s federal police have identified the suspects as Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira. Police said he made a confession Tuesday night and indicated where their bodies were buried. The next day, the suspect took police to the area where the two were allegedly killed.
According to federal police spokesman Eduardo Alexander Fontes, police are currently excavating the area and have found human remains that will be sent to Brazil for forensic analysis on Thursday.
Veteran correspondent Dom Phillips and Brazilian researcher Bruno Araujo Pereira disappeared on June 5 during a trip to the Havari Valley in the far western part of the state of Amazonas. They were last seen in the Sao Rafael community on a two-hour boat trip from Atalaya to Norte after accompanying a local patrol on the Itaquai River to prevent illegal fishermen and hunters from invading local Javari Valley land. Police arrested a second suspect in connection with the missing men on Tuesday, according to federal police. Amarildo was arrested last week.
Police said the second suspect, a 41-year-old man, has been questioned and will be remanded in custody at the municipal court. They also said they had seized ammunition for a firearm and a paddle, which will be analyzed.
Phillips and Pereira disappeared while researching a draft book on conservation efforts, which authorities described as “complex” and “dangerous” and known to house illegal miners, loggers and international drug dealers.
They reportedly received death threats just days before they disappeared.
Their case drew worldwide attention to the dangers often faced by journalists and environmental activists in Brazil.
Between 2009 and 2019, more than 300 people were killed in Brazil amid land and resource conflicts in the Amazon, according to Human Rights Watch, citing data from the Pastoral Land Commission, a non-profit organization affiliated with the Catholic Church.
And in 2020, Global Witness ranked Brazil as the fourth most dangerous country for environmental activism based on documented killings of environmentalists. Nearly three-quarters of those attacks in Brazil took place in the Amazon region, the report said.
Phillips had reported in detail on the most marginalized Brazilian groups and the destruction that criminal actors are inflicting on the Amazon.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro criticized the couple’s trip after their disappearance, saying in an interview with YouTube before the suspect’s confession on Wednesday that Phillips and Pereira’s actions were “reckless” and suggested that if they were “killed”, the bodies would be disappeared into the Havari River.
CNN’s Kara Fox and Julianne Koch contributed to this report.
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