“The main criminal case at this point is that those involved and their motives were related to illegal fishing and poaching in indigenous areas,” said the federal police officer. Their disappearance has resonated worldwide, with politicians, celebrities, journalists and activists urging the government of Brazilian President Zaire Bolsonaro to step up efforts to locate them. Sian Phillips with Gareth Phillips, right, Dom Phillips brothers, hold a placard and a rose outside the Brazilian embassy in London on Thursday. (Toby Melville / Reuters) Brazilian Justice Minister Anderson Torres said he had told Vicky Ford, a senior British official in Latin America, that Brazil would continue to search for Phillips until it had exhausted all possibilities after meeting on the sidelines of the summit. America in Los. Angeles.
John Kerry is pushing for the search to continue
Torres said he had 300 hundred people, two planes and 20 boats conducting the search in a “very difficult area”, he said. “Even if you have 30 aircraft, a million people, it may not work,” said Torres, who was also pressured by US climate leader John Kerry to continue the investigation. Phillips and Pereira were on a reference trip to the Javari Valley, a remote jungle area near the border with Peru and Colombia that hosts the largest number of contactless natives. The wild, unruly area has lured cocaine smugglers, as well as poachers and fishermen. Fishermen and poachers travel deep into the Javari Valley, near the Peruvian border, to find protected species such as pirarucu, which are sold in regional markets in nearby towns such as Tabatinga. In 2019, Maxciel Pereira, who worked with Funai to stop illegal fishing in the Javari Valley, was shot and killed in Tabatinga. As a former Funai official in the detention of indigenous Javari, Pereira often clashed with fishermen looting protected fish stocks and traveled the area with a gun. He had recently received a threatening letter from a fisherman, police told Reuters.
The fishermen were asked
Police in the town of Atalaia do Norte interrogated several fishermen as witnesses and arrested one of them, a local fisherman named Amarildo da Costa, known locally as “Pelado”. He was charged with illegal possession of ammunition. Police said he was one of the last people to see the two men. Federal police announced Thursday that a medical examiner and state police are checking for “possible genetic material” on the boat with Luminol reagent, which reveals bloodstains. A detective in the case said that the police are investigating whether the traces of blood found on the boat of da Costa were human or not. A senior federal police officer and one of the detectives said Da Costa was suspected of illegal fishing. Detectives said Da Costa and several other local fishermen interviewed by police as witnesses were working for a man known as “Colombia”, a large buyer of fish and prey caught in the shelter. Reuters was unable to contact or determine the official name of the buyer. Two residents of Atalaia do Norte told Reuters that “Colombia” lived across the border in Peru. Da Costa’s lawyer, Davy Oliveira, said his client was not involved in the disappearance of Phillips and Pereira and was only involved in legal fishing. Oliveira said she did not know if Da Costa worked for Colombia. Oliveira left the case late Thursday and it was not immediately clear who would defend Da Costa in court.
