News of the couple’s disappearance resonated around the world, and environmentalists and human rights activists pushed the Brazilian president to do more to help with the investigation. Mr Bolsonaro, who faced a tough question from Mr 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 that they could have been executed. The state police involved in the investigation said they were focusing their investigations on poachers and illegal fishermen in the area, who often clashed with Mr Pereira as he organized indigenous patrols at local shelters. Police have arrested a suspect, fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, who has been accused of threatening the couple. According to eyewitnesses, the fisherman aimed his rifle at the two men the day before they disappeared. He denies any wrongdoing. Mr Phillips’s brother-in-law, Mr Serwood, told the Washington Post: “Dom was a brave guy. He did something he thought was very important. “He must have known that he was taking risks, and we hope that not only justice will be done, but that the book he wrote will be published and history will be told (sic).”
