Brazil: They ordered the arrest of a third suspect in the double murder in the Amazon

Brazilian justice ordered this Friday the arrest of a third suspect for the murder of the British journalist Dom Phillips57, and the Brazilian indigenous leader Bruno Pereira41 years old, who disappeared on June 5 in a remote region of the Amazon, where they had gone to gather information for a book on the threats suffered by the Indians of that place.

This is a man identified as Jefferson da Silva Limaknown as “Pelado da Dinha”, 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 federal police confirmed that some of the mortal remains found Wednesday in the Amazon correspond to reporter Phillips, while an investigation into whether the other remains belong to Pereira is still ongoing.

The new arrest was ordered by a regional criminal court in Atalaia do Norte, a municipality in the state of Amazonas. However, da Silva Lima has not yet been locatedso already is considered a fugitiveaccording to the Federal Police.

“The federal police and civilian police continue to join forces to locate and arrest the fugitive,” the agency added in a statement calling for help from people who have information on his whereabouts.

As they remarked, the investigations “indicate the fact that the perpetrators acted alone”, thus excluding the alleged participation of criminal organizations in the crime or that the killers acted under the command of a third party.

However, this hypothesis was disproved by the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Vale de Javari (Univaja), which argued that “the degree of cruelty used in the practice of crime shows that Pereira and Phillips have crossed paths with a powerful criminal organization that He tried at all costs to cover his tracks.

Phillips was a journalist who 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 on the threats suffered by indigenous communities in the Amazon.

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 expertise combined with forensic anthropology” carried out by experts from the Federal Police, who are still working to try to establish whether other remains found correspond to the indigenist.

Phillips and Araújo Pereira had been missing since June 5 and were last seen navigating a river in the Javari Valley region, in a remote area of ​​the Brazilian Amazon bordering Colombia and Peru.

The two brothers arrested for the crime are fishermen and had already been reprimanded by Araújo Pereira for fishing in areas subject to the jurisdiction of indigenous reserves, which is prohibited.

One of the prisoners confessed to the crime and took the authorities to the place where he buried the bodies of his victims, located about 3 kilometers in the jungle from the river where he intercepted and killed them.

Pereira had repeatedly received threats for his complaints against organizations involved in drug trafficking, logging, illegal fishing and hunting in the indigenous reserves of Vale de Javari.

The deaths of Phillips, 57, and Araújo, 41, generated a worldwide shock and exposed the threats surrounding the jungle and the indigenous people of the Amazon.

With information from EFE.