The boat used by British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous advocate Bruno Pereira when they were killed in the Amazon jungle has been recovered by police.
Operatives with “the fire service and the navy found the boat used by the victims at around 8:20 p.m. on 19 June,” federal police in the state of Amazonas said in a statement.
“The boat will be submitted to the necessary forensic examinations so as to contribute to a complete clarification of all the facts.”
The white metal craft was found at a depth of between 20 and 30 meters near the bank of the Itaquaí River, said police chief Alex Perez Timóteo.
It had been weighed down by six sacks of earth. Police also found the 40HP Yamaha engine.
Phillips and Pereira were traveling in the boat on 5 June when they were reporting missing after failing to appear at their destination in Atalaia do Norte, a small town close to Brazil’s border with Peru.
Phillips was working on a book about sustainable development called How To Save the Amazon, and Pereira, who had close contacts with local indigenous groups, was helping him with interviews.
Three men have been arrested in connection with the crime, with one of the three confessing to their murder. He last week led police to a remote spot in the jungle where they buried Phillips’ and Pereira’s bodies after shooting them with hunting rifles.
Another five people are wanted by authorities for “having participated in the hiding of the bodies”.
Although officials have not posited any reason for the brutal killings, it is believed that Pereira was the main target of the men.
As a defender of indigenous peoples and a former official with the federal government’s indigenous foundation, he knew of the illegal fishing that was rife in the area and had been threatened before by at least one of the three men detained by police.
The area in the far west of Brazil is home to large quantities of turtles and pirarucu, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world. The animals fetch high prices at markets in Atalaia do Norte, as well as across the border in neighboring Colombia.
The murder has prompted anger both in Brazil and Britain, where Phillips previously worked as editor of Mixmag magazine in the 1990s.
It has shone an unflattering light on the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, a man many believe bears some responsibility for the crime.
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Bolsonaro has weakened the state organs designed to protect indigenous people and the environment and has encouraged the loggers, miners and hunters to invade parts of the Amazon that are legally reserved exclusively for indigenous groups.
The number of invasions and attacks recorded on indigenous land went from 111 in 2018, the year before Bolsonaro took power, to 263 in 2020, according to a study compiled by indigenous rights group CIMI.
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism