Brazil police charge alleged mastermind behind murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira
Alleged leader of ‘transnational criminal organisation’ and a supposed subordinate have been charged over the 2022 murders of journalist and Indigenous expert
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Sun 4 Jun 2023 21.31 EDT
Brazilian police have charged the alleged leader of a “transnational criminal organization” with being the mastermind of the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in the Amazon one year ago. The British journalist and the Brazilian Indigenous expert were shot dead while returning from a reporting trip to the remote Javari valley region on 5 June 2022.
Three local fishers are currently in prison awaiting a possible jury trial on suspicion of murdering Phillips and Pereira, a former government official who had been helping Indigenous activists to defend their lands from illegal fishing and mining gangs.
On Sunday night, the Brazilian broadcaster TV Globo revealed that federal police had formally charged two more men over the murders.
They are:
- Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, the alleged leader of a transnational illegal fishing network that operated in the tri-border region between Brazil, Colombia and Peru
- And Jânio Freitas de Souza, a fisher who was allegedly one of Silva Villar’s henchmen along the Itaquaí river where Phillips and Pereira were murdered.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/05/brazil-police-charge-alleged-mastermind-behind-murders-of-dom-phillips-and-bruno-pereira
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Tom Phillips in Atalaia do Norte
Sat 3 Jun 2023 13.00 EDT
Javari Valley’s most prized asset is the arapaima, a giant air-breathing fish which Brazilians call the pirarucu and Peruvians know as paiche. Photograph: Mamiraua Institute of Sustainabl/AFP/Getty Images
Poaching of endangered species flourishes despite widespread outcry – but sustainable fishing could end the violence engulfing the trade
José Maria Batista Damasceno weeps as he describes his decades dodging death in the Brazilian Amazon.
There was the time, along the Japurá River, that an illegal fisherman threatened to butcher him if he didn’t get out of town. “You’d better leave or we’ll harpoon you,” Damasceno remembers being told.
A few years later he narrowly escaped being ambushed and murdered in another remote corner of the rainforest – just as Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips were last year.
“It was really, really heavy,” Damasceno says, breaking down as he describes how the failure of his boat’s engine saved him from running into a group of heavily armed assassins who were lying in wait.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/03/poaching-brazil-amazon-fishing-pirarucu-dom-phillips-bruno-pereira