Rio de Janeiro: The family of a missing journalist says they have been told by Brazilian authorities that two bodies have been found tied to a tree in the Amazon rainforest. The report came more than a week after the journalist and a Brazilian government official went missing.
Police said they have collected “biological materials” during the search, but have not confirmed they are the remains of British journalist Dom Phillips, a Brazil-based contributor to the Guardian and onetime contract writer for The Washington Post, or Bruno Pereira, a longtime official at Brazil’s Indigenous rights organisation. Police said reports that the bodies of Phillips and Pereira had been found were inaccurate.
A worker of the National Indian Foundation, FUNAI, stands next to a banner with images of missing Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, right, and freelance British journalist Dom Phillips, during a vigil in Brasilia, Brazil, on Monday.Credit:AP
A spokesman for local indigenous association UNIVAJA, which has organised search efforts since June 5, denied subsequent reports of two bodies turned up in the search.
“I’ve spoken with the team in the field and it’s not true,” said Eliesio Marubo, a lawyer for UNIVAJA, according to Reuters. “The search goes on.”
Search parties on Sunday recovered items that belonged to the two men, including Pereira’s health insurance card, their boots and Phillips’s backpack, which was filled with clothing. Local media reported that the items were submerged in water and tied to the roots of a tree.
“The biological material is being analysed, along with the personal belongings of the disappeared men,” the federal police said in a statement on Monday. “As soon as a finding occurs, the family and media will be immediately informed.”
Paul Sherwood, Phillips’s brother-in-law, told The Washington Post that he visited the Brazilian embassy in London last week to discuss the disappearances. He said an official he met there, Roberto Doring, contacted him Monday morning and asked to speak. Doring told him two bodies had been found tied to a tree in the forest.
“He told me it was likely to be Dom and Bruno,” Sherwood said. “But he wasn’t telling me that as an official statement, and would come back later with the results. No one has rung me since.”
The Brazilian embassy in London said it has been in contact with Phillips’s family. It declined to comment on “the substance of this contact”.
The Washington Post
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