British journalist Dom Phillips and his Brazilian guide, whose disappearance in the Amazon about two weeks ago sparked an international outcry, were killed by gunfire, Brazilian police said on Saturday.
A day after investigators identified remains found buried in a remote part of the Amazon as those of Phillips, officials said a second set of remains belonged to his guide, indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.
Authorities said both men were gunshot victims — Phillips, 57, struck by a single shot to the chest, Pereira, 41, by three shots, one to the head — with ammunition typically used for hunting. Pereira, an outspoken defender of indigenous rights, had received multiple death threats.
Photo: AP
The two men went missing on June 5 in an isolated part of the rainforest rife with illegal mining, fishing and logging, as well as drug trafficking.
Ten days later, a suspect took police to a place near the city of Atalaia do Norte in western Amazon state, where he said he had buried bodies. Soon after, the suspect’s brother was also detained.
Police on Saturday said an additional suspect in the case, who they identified as Jefferson da Silva Lima, also known as “Pelado da Dinha,” had turned himself in at the police station in Atalaia do Norte.
Commissioner Alex Perez Timoteo told news site G1 that evidence and testimony collected so far indicated that the suspect “was at the scene of the crime and actively participated in the double homicide that occurred.”
On Friday, police said they believed the perpetrators had “acted alone, without there being an intellectual author or criminal organization behind the crime.”
Activists have blamed the killings on Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for allowing commercial exploitation of the Amazon at the cost of the environment and law and order.
For his part, Bolsonaro sought to lay blame at the door of the men themselves for undertaking a “reckless” trip in an area where Phillips was “disliked.”
Phillips, a longtime contributor to several leading international newspapers, including the British newspaper the Guardian, was working on a book on sustainable development in the Amazon with Pereira as his guide.
Pereira, an expert at Brazil’s indigenous affairs agency FUNAI, had received multiple threats from loggers and miners with their eye on isolated indigenous land. The Univaja association of indigenous peoples, which had taken part in the search for the men, rejected the police’s conclusion that the killers had acted alone.
“These are not just two killers, but an organized group that planned the crime in detail,” Univaja said in a statement.
The group claimed authorities had ignored numerous complaints about the activities of criminal gangs in the area.
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