Brazil police focus on illegal fishers, poachers in investigation into missing British journalist
Brazilian police investigating the disappearance of a British journalist and an indigenous expert in the Amazon rainforest are focusing on people involved in illegal fishing and poaching in indigenous lands, three officers told Reuters.
Witnesses said they last saw Dom Phillips, a freelance journalist who has written for the Guardian and the Washington Post, on Sunday. Phillips was travelling deep in a lawless part of the Amazon rainforest with Bruno Pereira, a former official with federal indigenous agency Funai. Torres said he had 300 hundred people, two aircraft and 20 boats conducting the search in what he called a “very difficult region”.
Fishermen and poachers travel deep into the Javari Valley, next to the border with Peru, to find protected species like the pirarucu fish, which are sold in regional markets in nearby cities such as Tabatinga. In 2019, Maxciel Pereira, who worked with Funai to shut down illegal fishing in the Javari Valley, was shot dead in Tabatinga.
Federal police on Thursday said a forensic officer and state police were checking for “possible genetic material” on the boat with the reagent Luminol, which reveals blood stains. A detective in the case said police were investigating whether traces of blood found on da Costa’s boat were human or not.