ATALAIA DO NORTE, Brazil –
A search in Brazil for an indigenous expert and journalist who went missing in a troubled area of the Amazon a week ago has progressed with the discovery of a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings of men immersed in a river.
The items were found Sunday afternoon and transported by federal police officers by boat to Atalaia do Norte, the nearest town to be searched. In a statement Sunday night, police said they had identified the items as belongings of the two missing men, including a health card and clothes from Bruno Pereira, an expert on Brazil’s indigenous people.
The backpack, which was identified as the property of freelance journalist Dom Phillips of Britain, was found tied to a tree that was half submerged, a firefighter told reporters at Atalaia do Norte. The end of the rainy season in the region and part of the forest is flooded.
The development came a day after police said they found traces of blood in the boat of a fisherman who was arrested as the only suspect in the disappearance. Officials also found in the river organic matter of apparently human origin. The materials are analyzed.
Search teams that found the laptop and other items on Sunday had focused on a site in the Itaquai River where a tarpaulin was found on Saturday from a boat used by the missing men by volunteers from the Matisse group.
“We used a little canoe to get to the shallow waters. Then we found a tarpaulin, shorts and a spoon, “one of the volunteers, Binin Beshu Mathis, told the Associated Press.
Pereira, 41, and Phillips, 57, were last seen on June 5 near the entrance to the local Havari Valley, which borders Peru and Colombia. They returned alone by boat on the Itakuai to Atalaya do Norte, but never arrived.
Violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents are taking place in the area. Violence is on the rise as drug trafficking gangs struggle to control waterways to deliver cocaine, although Itaquai is not a known route for drug trafficking.
Authorities say the main line of the police investigation into the disappearance points to an international network that pays poor fishermen to fish illegally in the Havari Valley Reserve, Brazil’s second-largest indigenous territory.
One of the most valuable targets is the world’s largest freshwater fish with scales, arapaima. It weighs up to 200 kilograms and can reach 3 meters. The fish is sold in nearby cities, including Leticia, Colombia, Tabatinga, Brazil and Iquitos, Peru.
The only known suspect in the disappearances is the fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as Pelado, who has been arrested. According to local people who were with Pereira and Phillips, he brandished a rifle against them the day before the couple disappeared.
The suspect denies committing a crime and said military police tortured him to try to obtain a confession, his family told the Associated Press.
Pereira, who previously headed the local office of the Brazilian government’s Indigenous Peoples Agency, known as FUNAI, is involved in several operations against illegal fishing. In such operations, fishing gear is normally seized or destroyed and fishermen are fined and detained for a short time. Only indigenous peoples can legally fish in their territories.
“The motive for the crime is some kind of personal feud over the fisheries inspectorate,” Atalaya Mayor to Norte Denis Paiva speculated to reporters, without giving further details.
The AP had access to information that the police shared with the indigenous leadership. But while some police officers, the mayor and others in the region have linked the disappearances to the “fish mafia”, federal police do not rule out other lines of investigation, such as drug trafficking.
Fisherman Laurimar Alves Lopez, who lives on the shores of Itakuai, told the AP that he had given up fishing in the indigenous population after being detained three times. He said he had been beaten and starved in prison.
Lopez, who has five children, said he only fishes near his home to feed his family, not sell.
“I made a lot of mistakes, I stole a lot of fish. When you see your child starving, you go and get him where he needs to be. So I would go there to steal fish so I could support my family. But then I said: I will put an end to this, I will plant, “he said during an interview on his boat.
Lopez said he was taken to the local federal police headquarters in Tabatinga three times, beaten and left without food.
In 2019, Funai employee Maxiel Pereira dos Santos was shot dead in Tabatinga in front of his wife and daughter-in-law. Three years later, the crime remains unsolved. His FUNAI colleagues told the AP that they believe the killing is linked to his work against fishermen and poachers.
Rubber rubber founded all the communities on the banks of the river in the area. In the 1980s, however, the suction of rubber decreased and they resorted to logging. This also ended when the federal government established the local territory of the Jawari Valley in 2001. Since then, fishing has become a major economic activity.
Illegal fishing in the vast Havari Valley has been going on for about a month, said Manoel Felipe, a local historian and teacher who was also an adviser. A fisherman can earn at least $ 3,000 for each illegal intrusion.
“Fishermen’s financiers are Colombians,” Felipe said. “Everyone in Leticia was angry with Bruno. This is not a small game. It is possible that they sent an armed man to kill him.
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