BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) – A federal court in Brazil on Tuesday dropped charges against one of three men arrested in connection with the murder of an indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and the British journalist Dom Phillips in the Amazon, claiming that there was not enough evidence to prove it.
Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, a poor fisherman who lived near the Itaquai River, was arrested on June 14, 2022, nine days after the murders.
His brother was also arrested, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveiraand Jefferson da Silva Lima, who confessed to the murders, but declared self-defense. The Federal District Court of the 1st Region upheld a lower court decision that now faces a jury trial.
With the sentence, Oseney Oliveira, a father of four, will be released after 27 months in prison, most of it in a federal penitentiary thousands of miles from Atalaia do Norte, his hometown in the Brazilian Amazon, where the murders took place.
A Colombian businessman, Rubens Villar Coelho, is there accused of profession the murders and is still in custody. As the owner of a floating fish warehouse outpost, he financed illegal fishermen who venture onto indigenous lands. He denies any involvement in the murders.
In a statement, Univaja, an association of the indigenous peoples of the Javari Valley where Pereira was working at the time of his murder, said it received the decision with “outrage” and “concern” and urged federal prosecutors to appeal the decision.
Phillips and Pereira were traveling along the Itaquai River near the entrance to the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia, when they were attacked. Their bodies were dismembered, burned and buried. His disappearance sparked intense international outcry and pressure for action.
Pereira, a well-known lawyer for indigenous rights, fought against illegal fishing in the Javari area, while Phillips, an experienced journalist, was working on a book about the preservation of the Amazon.
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