According to reports, the British national was threatened before his disappearance from a remote area of Amazonia.
Brazil’s federal police say they have identified the remains of British reporter Dom Phillips, claiming to have solved a missing persons case centered on the journalist and another local man following a search operation that began nearly two weeks ago.
Two bodies of men were found near Atalaia Do Norte, Brazil’s border. The police announced this Friday. While Phillips, 57, was positively identified, the other body found has yet to be ID’d, though is thought to belong to Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who went missing while traveling with the journalist earlier this month.
According to an indigenous organization that worked with Pereira, the Univaja association, both he and Phillips disappeared “after receiving threats”From poachers in remote regions and illegal fishermen. Phillips had been on a trip reporting on Amazonia before they vanished.
Brazil’s federal police force has identified the perpetrators as Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, a 41-year-old fisherman who allegedly confessed to the killings, as well as the man’s brother, Oseney. Amarildo claimed he had a gun and that he brought police officers into the jungle to find the remains of the men. However, his brother denied any involvement in the crime.
“We found the bodies three kilometers [1.8 miles] into the woods,”Eduardo Alexandre Fontes was the federal investigator. He spoke to reporters before the remains could be identified. The search party walked for nearly two hours along the river, and then another half an hour on foot to get to the burial site.
Phillips, Pereira and others were last seen on board a boat that was navigating the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory. This territory is near the border with Colombia (and Peru) and has been the scene of past clashes between armed poachers and government forces.
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