Alleged drug lord blamed for murders of U.K. reporter, Indigenous activist

Tue, January 24, 2023

Police in Brazil have strong evidence that an alleged drug trafficker ordered the murders of a British journalist and an Indigenous activist in the Amazon last June, a police chief said on Monday.

Police believe Ruben da Silva Villar, who uses the nickname "Colombia" and is in custody, ordered the murders of the two men, Eduardo Fontes, chief of federal police in the Amazonas region, said at a news conference.

Fontes said the case over the murders of U.K. journalist Dom Phillips, 57, and Bruno Pereira, a 41-year-old Indigenous activist, was "90 percent" wrapped up and "practically closed."

"The investigations are in the final phase and we have strong evidence that point to 'Colombia' as the mastermind of these crimes," Fontes said.

A sign that reads in Portuguese

Da Silva Villar has been in police custody since December, but his identity was difficult to pin down as he carried three sets of identity papers, two from Peru and one from Brazil, police said.


Authorities finally determined that he was born in Puerto Narino, Colombia, a town in an Amazon region near where the borders of Colombia, Brazil and Peru meet.

Fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, nicknamed Pelado, confessed that he shot Phillips and Pereira and has been under arrest since soon after the killings in early June.

Phillips and Pereira were shot dead June 5 in Valle de Javari, a remote area where illegal fishing, mining and logging are rife. Both men disappeared "after receiving threats," according to an association that worked with the Indigenous expert.

Fontes said Villar had provided weapons and boats to three men accused of the actual murders, and later paid for the lawyer for one of them.

Phillips, a freelance journalist whose work had appeared in The Guardian and The New York Times, was traveling with Pereira doing research for a book on the Amazon.

British journalist Dom Phillips, right, and a Yanomami Indigenous man walk in Maloca Papiu village, Roraima state, Brazil, Nov. 2019. / Credit: Joao Laet / AP

Villar was detained in July, and freed in October on bond. But courts ordered his imprisonment again after he failed to meet conditions of his conditional freedom.

In a statement, UNIVAJA, the local Indigenous association that employed Pereira, said it believed there were other significant planners behind the killings who have not been arrested.

Journalists working for regional media outlets in the Amazon have been slain in recent years, though there had been no such cases among journalists from national media nor foreign media. However, there have been several reports of threats, and the press has limited access to several areas dominated by criminal activity, including illegal mining, landgrabbing and drug trafficking.

In September 2019, an employee of the Indigenous affairs agency was shot dead in Tabatinga, the largest city in the region. The crime was never solved.

In 2017, British citizen Emma Kelty was killed while attempting to kayak the length of the Amazon. The 43-year-old Londoner vanished after she posted comments on social media sharing her fear of being robbed or murdered in a remote jungle area of northern Brazil that is used by drug traffickers and pirates.

That same year, Brazilian prosecutors investigated reports that gold prospectors may have killed members of a so-called uncontacted tribe in the Amazon.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Suspected mastermind in killings of British journalist and indigenous expert in the Amazon is named

Mon, 23 January 2023 

A Colombian fish trader is set to be indicted as the mastermind of last year's killing of British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.

Police have said Ruben Dario da Silva Villar provided the ammunition to target the pair, made phone calls to the confessed killer before and after the crime, and paid his lawyer.

Fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, nicknamed Pelado, admitted that he shot Mr Phillips and Mr Pereira, and has been under arrest since soon after the killings in early June.

He and three other relatives are accused of being involved in the crime.

They all live in a poor community inside a federal agrarian reform settlement between the city of Atalaia do Norte and Javari Valley Indigenous Territory.

Mr Villar has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

Before Monday's announcement, he was already being held on charges of using false Brazilian and Peruvian documents and leading an illegal fishing scheme.

According to the investigation, he financed local fishermen to fish inside Javari Valley Indigenous Territory.

In a statement, UNIVAJA, the local indigenous association that employed Mr Pereira, said it believed there were other significant plotters behind the killings who have not been arrested.

Mr Pereira and Mr Phillips were travelling in the remote area of the Amazon when they disappeared and their bodies were recovered after the confessions.

Mr Phillips was researching a book about how to save the world's largest rainforest.

Brazilian police name alleged ‘mastermind’ behind murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira


Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Mon, January 23, 2023 

Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters

Brazilian police have named the alleged mastermind behind the murders of the British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon last year.

Rubens Villar Coelho, whose nickname is Colômbia, was first arrested on separate charges last July – one month after the two men were murdered in the Javari valley region of the Amazon. He was released in October but was rearrested last month for breaking his bail terms.

On Monday afternoon, the federal police chief for Amazonas state, where the Javari valley is located, told reporters that investigators had concluded Villar Coelho – who has been accused of running an illegal fishing racket in the remote border region – had ordered the murders.

“I have no doubt that Colômbia was the mastermind,” Alexandre Fontes said at a press conference in the state capital, Manaus, according to the Brazilian news website G1.

Three other men are currently in custody for the murders and stand accused of shooting Phillips and Pereira as they travelled down the Itaquaí River on the morning of 5 June 2022. They are Amarildo da Costa Oliveira, Jefferson da Silva Lima and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira.

Fontes said investigators had gathered evidence that Villar Coelho provided the first two of those men with the ammunition that was used to commit the murder.

Fontes claimed the ​16-gauge shotgun used in the crime had been provided by Amarildo da Costa Oliveira’s brother, Edvaldo da Costa Oliveira, “in the knowledge that it would be used to murder Bruno and Dom”.

Villar Coelho had also paid for Amarildo da Costa Oliveira’s initial defense lawyer, Fontes added.

Villar Coelho denied involvement in the crime after being detained last July.

Phillips, 57, a longtime Guardian contributor and foreign correspondent, travelled to the Javari valley with Pereira as part of research for a book he was writing called How to Save the Amazon.

Related: How the final journey of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira ended in tragedy

At the time of the murders, 41-year-old Pereira, a revered Indigenous specialist and explorer, had been helping Indigenous communities in the Javari valley set up monitoring teams to defend their rainforest homes from illegal mining, poaching and fishing gangs with links to organized crime.

The murders sparked international outrage and exposed the damage done to Brazil’s environment and Indigenous communities during the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, who lost last October’s election and is currently in the US.

On Sunday, Bolsonaro’s successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, accused the rightwing populist of committing genocide against the Yanomami people of the Amazon by dismantling Indigenous protections and encouraging the illegal gold miners who have invaded that and other Indigenous territories.

Speaking to the Guardian recently in Brasília, Beto Marubo, a Javari leader who was close to Pereira, said Indigenous activists had seen no sign of the security situation improving in the region despite the outcry over the murders.

Marubo voiced hope that the men’s killers would be brought to justice under Brazil’s new government.

“We hope – and we will continue to demand from the new government​ and authorities​ – that there is justice for Dom and Bruno​,” he said.

Related: Six months after Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were murdered, the Amazon remains unsafe for activists

Relief that police had formally accused Villar Coelho, a notorious and feared figure in the region where Phillips and Pereira were killed, was tempered with ongoing suspicions that their murders were part of a bigger conspiracy in a region awash with environmental crime and drug trafficking, reportedly involving cartels from Colombia and Mexico.

The Javari valley, which is home to the world’s largest concentration of isolated Indigenous tribes, has become a major highway for cocaine and marijuana smuggling in recent years, with huge shipments of drugs being moved by river from Peru into Brazil and then on to Europe.

Eliesio Marubo, a representative of Univaja, the Indigenous NGO for which Pereira had worked, said the federal police conclusions had confirmed the murdered activist’s suspicions that Villar Coelho was involved in the fishing gangs that preyed on the supposedly protected Javari valley Indigenous territory. But Marubo said many questions remained.

Related: Amazon wild west: where drugs, fish and logging are big money but life is cheap

“Who is bankrolling these people so they are able to continue their criminal activities? Why is it that so many politicians in the region helped these criminals? Why is this criminal organization still operating in the region?” he asked, pointing to a November attack on another of the Javari’s Indigenous leaders.

Marubo said Javari activists wanted a “far-reaching investigation” which “truly showed who killed Dom and Bruno”.