BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — A federal court in Brazil on Tuesday dismissed charges against one of three men arrested for the murder of an expert on indigenous peoples. Bruno Pereira and British journalist Dom Phillips in the Amazon, because there was not enough evidence to prosecute him.
Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, a poor fisherman who lived on the Itaquai River, was arrested on June 14, 2022, nine days after the murders.
His brother was also arrested, Amarildo from the coast of Oliveiraand Jefferson da Silva Lima, who confessed to the murders but claimed he was defending himself. The Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region upheld a lower court decision that they will now face a jury trial.
With the statement, Oseney Oliveira, a father of four, will be released after serving 27 months in prison, most of it in a federal prison thousands of miles from Atalaia do Norte, his hometown in the Brazilian Amazon where the killings took place.
A Colombian businessman, Rubens Villar Coelho, stands accused of plotting the murders and is also in jail. As the owner of a floating fish storage facility, he financed illegal fishermen who ventured onto indigenous land. He denies any involvement in the murders.
In a statement, Univaja, an association of indigenous peoples from the Javari Valley where Pereira worked at the time of his killing, said it received the ruling with “outrage” and “concern” and urged federal prosecutors to appeal the decision.
Phillips and Pereira were traveling along the Itaquai River at the entrance to the Javari Valley Indigenous Territory, which borders Peru and Colombia, when they were attacked. Their bodies were dismembered, burned and buried. Their disappearance sparked intense international outrage and pressure for action.
Pereira, a well-known indigenous rights advocate, fought against illegal fishing in the Javari region, while Phillips, a veteran journalist, was working on a book on Amazon conservation.
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