A Federal Police crew arrives at the port during a search operation by British journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in Atalaia do Norte, Amazonas State, Brazil, on June 13.BRUNO KELLY / Reuters
The search for British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who went missing in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, was nearing completion on Tuesday, as the area to be searched became smaller, said a spokesman for the indigenous group. Univaja.
Phillips and Pereira disappeared more than a week ago along a remote stretch of the Itacoai River in the far west of Brazil, near the border with Colombia and Peru.
Univaja’s lawyer, Eliesio Marubo, said indigenous searchers alerted authorities after discovering traces of men in the area, helping to focus the search.
“We understand that we are moving towards the end. The search area has been further reduced,” Marubo said Monday afternoon.
On Sunday, police said searchers had found the belongings of the two men in a stream by the river near where they last saw them on June 5.
A statement from the federal police and a spokesman for Univaja, which has been organizing non-stop search efforts, have denied subsequent reports that two bodies had appeared in the search.
Brazilian federal police say they expect to complete forensic analysis this week of a blood sample collected from the boat of a man suspected of being involved in the disappearance.
The police statement on Sunday said the belongings of the two men who were recovered included a DNI from Pereira. A firefighter from a search team told reporters that a backpack with clothes and a laptop were tied to a half-sunken tree trunk.
Pereira, a former chief of isolated tribes and recently contacted at the government’s Indigenous affairs agency Funai, was traveling on an investigative trip with Phillips, a freelance journalist who has written for the Guardian and the Washington Post and was working on a book on the Amazon. .
They were in the remote jungle area, near the border with 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 news of the couple’s disappearance resonated worldwide, with human rights organizations, environmentalists and free press advocates urging Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to intensify the search. Bolsonaro, who once faced a harsh interrogation of Phillips at a news conference on the weakening of environmental law enforcement, said last week that the two men “were on an adventure that is not recommended.” and speculated that they may have been executed.
In Brasilia, Funai staff went on a one-day protest strike to demand more security from indigenous experts working in the field and the replacement of the head of the agency appointed by Bolsonaro, a police officer.
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