MANAUS, Brazil (AP) – Brazilian police said on Wednesday night that a fisherman had confessed to killing British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the remote Amazon, ending more than a week of searching as he took police deep. in the woods to the place where their bodies are buried.
After nightfall in the Havari Valley, near Brazil’s border with Peru and Colombia, search teams brought bags of corpses to the docks in the town of Atalaya do Norte. Officials said an autopsy would be needed to confirm whether the remains were Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41.
Police told a news conference in the Amazon city of Manaus that the prime suspect in the case had admitted on Tuesday night and told in detail what had happened to the missing couple on June 5th. They said other arrests would be made soon, but gave no details.
Federal investigator Eduardo Alexandre Fontes said 41-year-old Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, nicknamed Pelado, told officers he used a firearm to kill Pereira and Phillips.
“There is no way we can get to this place quickly without the confession,” Torres said of the site where police found human remains on Wednesday after being led there by Pelado.
Torres said the remains were expected to be identified within days and that if confirmed as missing, “will be returned to the families of the two.”
“We found the bodies three kilometers (almost two miles) in the woods,” the investigator said, adding that rescue teams had traveled about an hour and forty minutes down the river and another 25 in the woods to reach the burial site.
Pelado’s family said earlier that he denied committing a crime and claimed that police had tortured him in an attempt to obtain a confession.
Another officer, Guillermo Torres of the Amazonas State Police, said the boat of the missing men had not yet been found, but police knew the area where it was allegedly hidden from those involved in the crime.
“They put bags of soil on the boat to sink,” he said. The boat’s engine was removed, according to investigators.
A press conference at Brazil’s federal police headquarters in Manaus was also attended by military leaders who joined efforts to find Phillips and Pereira a few days after their disappearance was announced. Local leaders were not invited, who alerted about their disappearance and conducted searches deep in the forest from day one.
President Jair Bolsonaro, who has often criticized indigenous journalists and experts, has drawn criticism that the government did not get involved quickly enough. Earlier Wednesday, he criticized Phillips in an interview, saying without evidence that locals in the area where he disappeared did not like him and that he should have been more careful in the region.
His main opponent in the October election, former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, said in a statement that the killings “are directly linked to the abolition of public policies to protect indigenous peoples.” “This is also related to the incitement of violence by the current administration,” said da Silva, who is leading opinion polls.
Efforts to find the two began with indigenous peoples in the region. UNIVAJA, an association of indigenous peoples in the Yawari Valley, mourned the loss of “two partners” in a statement Wednesday, adding that they had received help and protection only from local police.
As the federal police announced that they would hold a press conference, Pereira’s colleagues called a vigil in front of the headquarters of the Brazilian government’s indigenous government agency in Brazil. Pereira was on leave from the agency.
Pereira and Phillips were last seen on their boat in a river near the entrance to the local Havari Valley, which borders Peru and Colombia. Violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents are taking place in the area.
Developments began on Wednesday when federal police officers took an unidentified suspect to search teams in Phillips and Pereira.
An Associated Press photographer in Atalaia do Norte, the town closest to the search area, witnessed police take away the hooded suspect.
Police said on Tuesday they had arrested a second suspect in connection with the disappearance. He was identified as Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, 41, a fisherman and Pelado’s brother, whom police have already identified as a prime suspect.
Police investigators said on Wednesday that de Oliveira had not pleaded guilty to the crime, but added that they had evidence against him.
Locals who were with Pereira and Phillips say Pelado brandished a rifle against them the day before the couple disappeared.
Official search teams have focused their efforts 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.
Authorities began patrolling the area and found a backpack, laptop and other personal belongings submerged under water on Sunday. Tonight, police said they had identified the items as belongings of the two missing men, including a health card and Pereira’s clothes. The backpack was said to belong to Phillips.
Police said earlier that they had found traces of blood in Pelado’s boat. Officers also found organic matter of apparently human origin in the river, which was sent for analysis.
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.
Pereira, who previously headed the local bureau of the Federal Indigenous 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 inspection,” Atalaia do Norte Mayor Denis Paiva speculated to reporters last week, without giving further details.
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.
Torres, a federal police officer, reiterated this Wednesday night, saying he could not discuss the details of the investigation.
“We are working on several lines of investigation,” he said.
Following the news of the discovery of human remains, Phillips’ wife, Alessandra Sampaio, said the find “puts an end to the pain of not knowing where Dom and Bruno are.”
“Now we can bring them home and say goodbye with love,” Sampaio said in a statement. “Today, we are also beginning our quest for justice.
____ Maisonnave reports from Manaus and Savarese reports from Sao Paulo.
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