Authorities announced on Friday, June 10, the discovery of
"apparently human organic matter"
during research linked to the disappearance of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenist Bruno Pereira in a remote area of the Brazilian Amazon.
"Research teams have located in the river, near the port of Atalaia do Norte, organic matter that appears to be human"
which will be subject to expertise, said in a press release the federal police (PF), spokesperson for the research it is conducting with the armed forces and local teams.
The PF did not say whether the organic material was found where firefighters were investigating traces of excavation, on the bank of the Itaquaí River in Amazonas state, where the two were traveling. men when they disappeared.
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“We were told of a mound of earth, as if there had been an excavation on the spot, as if something had been buried, and mud was thrown over it
,” said the second lieutenant of the fire department. Geonivan Maciel to reporters.
"We'll probe down to see if we find anything."
"We can't say there is any concrete trace
," he continued,
"but we'll see if we find anything that could link the missing two."
After a very slow start, the Brazilian federal police and army have intensified the search for the two men, who were last seen on Sunday morning in the locality of Sao Gabriel, not far from their destination, Atalaia do Norte.
A 41-year-old man, described as a
“suspicious”
, was taken into custody and traces of blood on his boat were to be analyzed.
Witnesses said they saw him speed past in a boat heading in the same direction as 57-year-old
Guardian
regular contributor Dom Phillips and 41-year-old indigenous peoples expert Bruno Pereira when they were last seen.
The two men were traveling together in the Javari Valley, a difficult area to access in the west of the Amazon, close to Peru and deemed dangerous with the presence of all kinds of traffickers.
The PF had said on Wednesday that it excluded
"no leads"
, including that of homicide, in an area considered
"dangerous"
.
According to local indigenous activists, Bruno Pereira was frequently threatened for his fight against encroachment on indigenous lands.
Read alsoDisappearances in the Amazon: traces of blood found on a suspect's boat
The government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has been criticized by relatives of the disappeared and indigenous groups for its delay in deploying searches.
“From the first moment, our armed forces and the Federal Police were mobilized in the tireless search for these people
,” Jair Bolsonaro defended himself on Friday in his speech at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.
This statement came just after that of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which had deemed
Brasília's response to the disappearances
"extremely slow"
and had expressed concern about the disappearance of these two people, as well as about attacks on activists and journalists in Brazil.
Jair Bolsonaro previously called Phillips and Pereira's expedition an
"adventure"
.
"In this region, we are generally escorted
," he said on Thursday.
