Brazilian search teams have found “apparently human” remains in the Amazon rainforest where a British journalist was last seen.
The “organic material” is being sent for forensic analysis, federal police said, along with blood found on a suspect’s boat.
Journalist Dom Phillips and traveling companion, indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, disappeared after visiting fisherman Amarildo da Costa’s Sao Gabriel river community.
A Brazilian judge has ordered that Costa, accused of illegal possession of restricted ammunition, be monitored for 30 days while police investigate whether he may be involved in the disappearance.
Image: Search teams have been searching for the missing couple along the Itacoai River
Police say Mr. Costa, known locally as Pelado, was one of the last people to see Phillips and Pereira.
Detectives in the case told Reuters news agency that they were focusing on “poachers and illegal fishermen in the area,” as they often clashed with Pereira, who as a senior agency official. Indigenous government Funai, had organized patrols in the local reserve.
Mr. Costa’s lawyers and family claim he fished legally in the river and denied any involvement in the men’s disappearance.
Witnesses say they last saw Mr. Phillips, a freelance journalist who has written for The Guardian and The Washington Post on Sunday.
The two men were on an information trip to the remote jungle area on the border between Peru and Colombia, which is home to the largest number of uncontacted indigenous people in the world.
The wild and lawless region has attracted cocaine smuggling gangs, along with loggers, miners and illegal hunters.
The Guardian said Pereira had received several threats from loggers and miners in the region.
The disappearance of the couple has attracted worldwide attention, in part due to the fact that Brazilian icons such as the great footballer Pelé and the singer Caetano Veloso join politicians, environmentalists and human rights activists to urge the president Jair Bolsonaro to intensify their search.