On Sunday, Brazilian police said search teams found some of their belongings in a creek outside the river where they were last seen for about a week. Among them was a health card in Pereira’s name, a Phillips backpack, along with the boots of both men. Authorities have not yet confirmed that the bodies have been found, the G1 reported. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Witnesses said they saw Pereira and Phillips, a freelance reporter who wrote for the Guardian and the Washington Post, traveling on the river on June 5. The two men were on a reference trip to the remote jungle region near the border with Peru and Colombia, home to the largest number of non-contact indigenous peoples in the world. The wild and illegal area has lured cocaine smuggling gangs, along with illegal loggers, miners and hunters. News of the couple’s disappearance resonated around the world, and environmentalists and human rights activists urged Brazilian President Zaire Bolsonaro to step up investigations. Bolsonaro, who faced a tough question from Phillips in a press conference last year about weakening environmental law in Brazil, said last week that the two men were “on an unintended adventure” and suggested they could had been executed. read more State police detectives involved in the investigation told Reuters that they were focusing on poachers and illegal fishermen in the area, who often clashed with Pereira as he organized patrols of indigenous people in the local detention center. read more Police have arrested a fisherman, Amarildo da Costa, known as “Pelado”, on a gun charge and are holding him in custody as he investigates whether he was involved in the men’s deaths. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Gabriel Araujo and Steven Grattan. Editing by Christian Plumb and Angus MacSwan Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
