Brazil’s Federal Police say the killings of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira are not related to organized crime

A new detainee for the disappearances in the Amazon 0:47 Sao Paulo, Brazil (CNN) — There is no indication that organized crime was involved in the killings of British journalist Dom Phillips and activist Bruno Pereira in the Amazon, he said. the Brazilian Federal Police (PF) in a statement this Friday.
The perpetrators of the crime acted of their own volition, “without having a main or criminal organization behind it,” the police said. The statement added that the search for Phillips and Pereira’s boat continues, with the support of indigenous communities in the region. He also added that “the investigations continue and there are indications of the participation of more people” in the homicides. Police added that more arrests are expected. Univaja, an indigenous association representing the indigenous communities of Brazil’s Javari Valley, issued a statement Friday reaffirming its disagreement with the police assessment. “The PF does not take into consideration the information offered by Univaja in various offices, from the second half of 2021, the period of implementation of the EVU [el equipo de vigilancia de Univaja]. Such documents point to the existence of an organized criminal group that is behind the constant invasions of the indigenous lands of the Javari Valley, to which Pelado and Dos Santos belong.” Univaja maintains that a group of hunters and fishermen are involved in the deaths and that the EVU described the group to the Brazilian Public Prosecutor’s Office and Funai, the government’s indigenous organization. “We describe the names of the invaders, members of the criminal organization, their methods, how they enter and leave the indigenous territories, the illegal products they carry, the type of boats they use in their illicit activities,” says the Univaja statement. The association claims that the Brazilian authorities ignored the group’s complaints and that Pereira and Phillips became “one of the main targets of this criminal group. The refinement of the cruelty used in the crime shows that Pereira and Phillips had become put in the way of a powerful criminal organization that tried to hide its tracks at all costs during the investigation,” added Univaja, stating that a criminal group planned the killings in detail.