Federal Police said Thursday they arrested a man “known as an informant and ally of the mastermind” behind the murders of Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips, who were killed in the western Amazon in June 2022.
Feds did not release the name of the suspect, who was arrested in the city of Tabatinga in the northern state of Amazonas.
Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips were ambushed and killed as they returned from the remote Vale do Javari indigenous territory, where they had spoken to local indigenous people about their efforts to combat crime encroaching on their protected lands.
Mr. Pereira, who had taken a leave of absence from the indigenous affairs agency Funai during the Jair Bolsonaro administration, was working with local indigenous affairs group Univaja and the Observatory for the Human Rights of Uncontacted and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples (OPI) at the time of his death. Mr. Phillips had been working on a book entitled ‘How to Save the Amazon’.
Rubens Villar Coelho, a Peruvian man known by the nickname “Colombia,” has been in custody in the city of Manaus since 2022. Feds believe he was the mastermind behind the double murder. He’s in jail for falsifying documents, as well as being “head of an armed transnational criminal organization, in another investigation involving smuggling and illegal fishing.”
Mr. Coelho was released on bail to house arrest in October 2022, but was jailed again for failing to wear an ankle bracelet and for living at a different address than the one he provided to authorities.
Separately, prosecutors have charged three other men with carrying out the double murder and concealing the bodies.
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