Family members of the sole person to be arrested in the disappearance of a British journalist and Indigenous official in the Amazon said Friday that he was innocent and alleged that police were torturing him to try to force a confession.
Freelance journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous official Bruno Pereira were last seen on Sunday morning in the Javari Valley, Brazil's second-largest Indigenous territory, which sits in an isolated area bordering Peru and Colombia. The two men were in the Sao Rafael community. They were returning by boat to the nearby city of Atalaia do Norte but never arrived.
Brazilian authorities are coming under enormous pressure to find Phillips and Pereira. A growing number of celebrities, politicians, civil society groups and international news organizations have called for the police, army and navy to bolster the search efforts. Members of Indigenous group of watchmen, who were with Pereira and Phillips on Saturday, the day before they disappeared, told the AP on Thursday that de Oliveira and two other men had brandished guns at them. Paulo Marubo, the president of a Javari Valley association of Indigenous people, Univaja, also told the AP that Phillips photographed the men at the time.
Phillips and Pereira had been speaking with people just outside the protected area, but never entered it, according to multiple people whom the AP interviewed in the area.
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