Star Metro - Brazil charges man with killings of UK journalist, activist

Pereira and Phillips, who freelanced for outlets including The Guardian and The Washington Post, were shot dead in the Amazon rainforest on June 5, 2022.

A Brazilian federal police probe concluded they were killed because of Pereira's monitoring of poaching and other illegal activities going on in the vast Amazon.

Three years to the day after the murders, a prosecutor from Amazonas state indicted the suspected mastermind, the state prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The suspect was not named, but the police had previously said they believed Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, a Colombian suspected drug trafficker who has been in custody since late 2022, of ordering the hits.

Pereira was a senior official with Brazil's indigenous affairs agency, and disappeared along with Phillips while they were traveling through a remote Indigenous reserve in the Amazon, close to the borders of Colombia and Peru.

Their hacked-up bodies were found and identified days later, after an alleged accomplice confessed to burying them. Autopsies showed they had been shot with shells used for hunting.

Phillips, 57, was shot in the chest, while Pereira, 41, sustained three gunshot wounds, one of them to the head.

The killings became a symbol in Brazil and abroad of the corruption and lawlessness fueling the destruction of the Amazon and the dangers faced by journalists and Indigenous experts who probe the issues.

So far, eight suspects have been charged over their role in the murders and/or concealment of the victims' remains.

In its final report into the killings in November 2024, the police said that mastermind "supplied the cartridges for the crime, financially sponsored its organization, and intervened to coordinate the concealment of the bodies."

G.Boudreau--SMC