Brazilian authorities say a suspect has admitted to killing Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

The Brazilian Federal Police identified the suspect as Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira. Police say he confessed to the killings Tuesday night and indicated where their bodies had been buried. The next day, the suspect led police to the location where Phillips and Araújo Pereira were killed.

According to the representative of the Federal Police, Eduardo Alexandre Fontes, when the police excavated the place they found human remains, which will be sent to Brasilia for forensic analysis.

When asked why the help of indigenous peoples in the search missions was not mentioned, the federal police acknowledged that it was a mistake not to recognize the contribution of indigenous peoples and said that his work was “fundamental”.

The disappearance of Dom Phillips and Bruno Araújo Pereira

Veteran correspondent Dom Phillips and Brazilian researcher Bruno Araújo Pereira disappeared on June 5, during a trip through the Javari Valley, in the far west of Amazonas state.

They were last seen in the community of Sao Rafael, a two-hour boat ride from the city of Atalaia do Norte, after accompanying an indigenous patrol on the Itaquaí River organized to prevent invasions by illegal fishermen and hunters on Earth. Indigenous of the Javari Valley.

On Tuesday, police arrested a second suspect in connection with the missing men, according to a Federal Police press release. The first suspect was arrested last week.

Police said the second suspect, a 41-year-old man, was being questioned and would be referred for a custody hearing in municipal court. They also said that some firearm cartridges and a pallet were seized, which will be analyzed.

Phillips and Pereira went missing while conducting research for a book project on conservation efforts in the region, which authorities have described as “complicated” and “dangerous” and known to be home to illegal miners, loggers and international drug traffickers.

According to reports, they had received death threats a few days before their disappearance.

His case has drawn global attention to the dangers that journalists and environmental activists often face in Brazil.

Between 2009 and 2019, more than 300 people were killed in Brazil amid conflicts over land and resources in the Amazon, according to Human Rights Watch, citing figures from the Pastoral Land Commission, a nonprofit affiliated with the Catholic Church.

And in 2020, Global Witness ranked Brazil the fourth most dangerous country for environmental activism, based on documented killings of environmental defenders. Nearly three-quarters of such attacks in Brazil took place in the Amazon region, he said.

Phillips had reported extensively on Brazil’s most marginalized groups and the destruction that criminal actors are wreaking in the Amazon.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has criticized the couple’s journey since their disappearance, saying in a YouTube interview ahead of the suspect’s confession Wednesday that Philips and Pereira’s activities were “reckless” and suggested that if they had been “murdered “, the bodies would be disappeared in the river Javari.