British freelance journalist Dominic “Dom” Phillips went missing on June 5, 2022, during a reporting trip in the Brazilian Amazon with Indigenous issues expert Bruno Pereira and their remains were found 10 days later, with gunshot wounds.
Phillips, 57, had reported for The Guardian, Financial Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Times newspapers, and had covered illegal mining, deforestation, and human rights issues in the Amazon. Phillips and Pereira were interviewing local residents and people defending Indigenous territory from illegal fishing for a book that Phillips was writing.
When Phillips and Pereira, who were reporting in the Javari Valley near the Brazil-Peru border, failed to arrive in northwestern Amazonas State’s Atalaia do Norte town on the morning of June 5, members of the Union of Indigenous Peoples of the Javari Valley (UNIVAJA) began a search. It soon emerged that fishermen working illegally in the area had threatened and brandished guns at Phillips, Pereira, and UNIVAJA members they were traveling with the previous day.
On June 7, Amazonas police arrested a fisherman, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also known as “Pelado,” for illegal possession of ammunition. An UNIVAJA activist identified him as one of several men who had threatened them. Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira and four other men chased Phillips and Pereira’s boat after they left the São Rafael community on the morning of June 5, state police officers alleged, O Globo newspaper reported. It also said a witness saw Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira loading a shotgun and packing ammunition that morning.
On June 8, The Guardian called the government’s response “sluggish” and a court ordered that helicopters and more personnel and boats be used in the search. The Ministry of Defense told CPJ in an email at the time that it had “immediately employed all means necessary for the searches.”
On June 9, the state court ordered the preventive arrest of Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira on suspicion of involvement in Phillips and Pereira’s disappearance.
On June 10, Agência Pública reported that Amarildo da Costa Oliveira alleged that Amazonas police abused him during his arrest; CPJ emailed that police department for comment but did not receive any reply.
On June 14, the police arrested Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, Pelado’s brother, for his alleged involvement in the case.
On June 15, Amazonas state Federal Police chief Eduardo Fontes announced that Amarildo da Costa Oliveira had confessed the previous night to killing Phillips and Pereira and sinking their boat and had led search teams to a site where remains had been found. On June 17, Federal Police confirmed they were Phillips’ and Pereira’s remains. Phillips had been shot once in the chest and Pereira three times with hunting ammunition.
On June 17, the Federal Police said in a statement, reviewed by CPJ, that their investigations indicated the killers acted alone and there was no mastermind behind them. Later that day, UNIVAJA accused the police of disregarding information it had provided in 2021 indicating “the existence of an organized criminal group” in the Javari Valley and alleging that “an organized group planned the crime in detail.”
On June 18, Jefferson da Silva Lima, a third suspect, turned himself in and confessed to Amazonas state police in Atalaia do Norte. Police statements, reviewed by CPJ, did not specify how he was alleged to have participated in the killing.
On June 19, search teams found Phillips and Pereira’s sunken boat near the Itaquaí River.
On June 23, police chief Fontes said in an interview that it was “possible there is a mastermind.”
On July 7, the case was transferred to a federal court as the crime related to the protection of Indigenous people, placing it under federal jurisdiction.
On July 22, the federal prosecutor’s office charged the Oliveira brothers and da Silva Lima with murder.
On August 5, the Federal Police arrested five other unnamed people suspected of participating in the killings. The police statement, reviewed by CPJ, did not provide details about their alleged roles.
On June 4, 2023, police charged two men over the murders: Colombian national Rubén Dario da Silva Villar, known as “Colombia” and the alleged “mastermind” of the killings and leader of a transnational illegal fishing network, and local fisherman Jânio Freitas de Souza.
Villar had been under arrest since July 8, 2022, for using false documents while being questioned about the killings, which he denied involvement in. While in prison, authorities recorded Villar saying that he had supplied ammunition for the murder. Police alleged that Villar’s illegal fishing group was monitoring Pereira, and that de Souza called Villar to alert him about Phillips and Pereira’s presence the day they disappeared.
In August 2023, authorities and the victims’ families requested a jury trial for the Oliveira brothers and da Silva Lima.
“I hope that the investigations exhaust all possibilities and bring definitive answers on all relevant details as soon as possible,” Phillips’ widow Alessandra Sampaio told CPJ. “We will only have peace when the necessary measures are taken so that tragedies like this never happen again.”
The Amazon is the most dangerous region in Brazil for land rights defenders, where about three-quarters of killings of environmental activists take place, according to the environmental group Global Witness.
In June 2024, two years after the killings, Sampaio announced the creation of the Instituto Dom Phillips, a digital platform to help preserve the rainforest.
On September 17, the federal court dropped the charges against Oseney da Costa de Oliveira as there was insufficient evidence of his participation. Due to health problems, he was placed under house arrest as the prosecutors could still appeal against the ruling or file a new charge against him.