These “remains” were discovered, in the state of Amazonas, 3 km from the Rio Itaquaí on which the two men sailed before their disappearance. According to the Brazilian press, the suspects are fishermen who have been surprised in the middle of an illegal fishing operation.
by
Is this the epilogue of the disaster affair that has been keeping Brazil in suspense for more than ten days? Wednesday, June 15, the country’s federal police announced that they have found “human remains” at the scene where research concentrated in order to find the trace of journalist Dom Phillips and anthropologist Bruno Araujo Pereira, missing in the Amazon in the region from Vale do Javari. A major advance for an investigation which had hitherto fought by its confusion and its extreme slowness.
These “remains” would have been unearthed at just over three kilometers from the Rio Itaquaí where the crime would have taken place and on which the two men were still sailing on June 5. An area covered with tropical forest, “very difficult to access” and devoid of any telephone signal, said Eduardo Alexandre Fontes, chief of the Amazonas State Federal Police, during a press conference organized in Manaus . The “material” collected must now be analyzed by an institute of criminology. But already no one keeps any doubt about the identity of the victims.
In his research, the police have been effective in one of the suspects. Amarhed Da Costa Oliveira, known as “Pelado” (naked, in Portuguese), fisherman in the region, has indeed confessed to having participated in the assassination. According to the police, the latter “told detail how the crime was committed”, revealed “where the bodies had been buried” and that the boat of Phillips and Pereira had flowed. Without waiting, on June 15, “Pelado” was therefore taken to the site in order to reconstruct the events. “We would never have managed to arrive quickly to this place without its confessions,” insisted Mr. Fontes.
Media mobilization
“It’s a big step in this odious affair, this brutal crime,” added the police chief, not hesitating in passing a real satisfaction with the security forces.
The sequence, however, threw on a raw light on the incredible disorganization of research teams. Reluctant to intervene, the army put several days before deploying in the Vale do Javari. It took a vast media mobilization and the urgency intervention of the Union’s public defense on June 6, for the police and the navy to use helicopters and boats in their investigations on site.
A deplorable episode came to illustrate this extreme confusion. On June 12, personal effects (backpack, health card, clothes, sandals, etc.) belonging to the two men were discovered attached to a tree underwater by divers firefighters. The next day, the British embassy informs the relatives of Dom Phillips that the bodies of the missing were finally found. But the relief will only be short -lived and information quickly denied publicly by the authorities of Brasilia. In private, the diplomats, however, claim to have been informed by high sources placed within the police …
You have 46.62% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.