Brazil's federal police have arrested five more men in an investigation into the murder of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon rainforest.
A fishing village on the Amazon River, which flows from Colombia into Brazil. Photo: 123rf
Police said in a statement that seven arrest warrants were issued for illegal fishing in the Vale do Javari region, the remote area close to the border with Colombia and Peru where Phillips and Pereira disappeared on 5 June.
The region has been invaded by illegal fishermen, loggers and gold miners, and police said it was a key drug trafficking route.
Phillips was a freelance reporter who wrote for the Guardian and the Washington Post and was doing research for a book on the trip with Pereira. Pereira was a former employee of indigenous affairs agency Funai, where he had been head of managing its work on isolated and recently contacted tribes.
Two of the seven suspects were already under arrest: Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, known as "Colombia", and fisherman Amarildo Costa de Oliveira, known as "Pelado", who was arrested in June as the primary suspect in the murder.
According to the police, Colombia would be the leader and financier of an armed criminal gang involved in illegal fishing that was smuggled out to neighbouring countries.
Three of the newly arrested men, whose names were not revealed, are relatives of Amarildo and were involved in concealing the bodies of Phillips and Pereira, police said.
Pereira had previously clashed with Amarildo over illegal fishing within the indigenous territory.
Federal prosecutors said that Phillips was murdered so that he could not identify the killers.
-Reuters
