Brazil Disappeared in the most dangerous corner of the Amazon
Murdered The Brazilian Amazon bleeds again
The
Brazilian Police
announced on Saturday the arrest of five other suspects in the murder of a British journalist and a Brazilian indigenous expert in the
Amazon
and accuses the nine people arrested so far of being involved in an illegal fishing net.
Federal police said the investigation into the murder of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in June revealed "strong indications" that one of the four suspects already in custody, an alleged drug trafficker known as
Colombia,
was the "leader and financial promoter of an armed criminal group dedicated to illegal fishing in the
Javari Valley region".
Phillips, 57, and Pereira, 41, were shot dead on June 5 in the Javari Valley, a jungle region near Brazil's border with
Peru
and
Colombia,
where there has been an increase in illegal fishing, logging, mining and drug trafficking.
Pereira had been working to stop illegal fishing in the Javari Valley indigenous reserve, a territory larger than
Austria
that has the largest concentration of uncontacted tribes on Earth.
Phillips, a freelance journalist who contributed to
The Guardian, The New York Times
and other newspapers, was traveling with him doing research for a book he was writing called
How to Save the Amazon.
Native leaders cooperating with Pereira accuse
Colombia
of ordering the expert's death for having organized indigenous patrols that seized lucrative cargoes of illegal fishing.
Police said the alleged drug trafficker, whose real name is
Rubén Darío da Silva Villar,
a Colombian national, led a group "responsible for selling large amounts of fish for export to neighboring countries."
Among the five new detainees there are three relatives of the first arrested in the case, local fisherman
Amarildo
Pelado
Costa de Oliveira,
who was helped to hide the bodies in the bush, police said.
One was captured during the night at a party in the town of
Atalaia do Norte.
The others were detained in small nearby fishing communities.
The double murder fueled accusations that President
Jair Bolsonaro is
fomenting a growing anarchy in the Brazilian Amazon.
Deforestation has increased in the region since Bolsonaro took office in 2019 and promised to expand agribusiness in the world's largest rainforest, key to combating climate change.
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