Appeal judges in Brazil yesterday upheld charges against only two of the three men accused of murdering Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips, in a decision “received with indignation” by Indigenous activists.
The three judges ruled that there was “insufficient evidence of authorship or participation” by Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, a fisher, in the 2022 deaths of the Brazilian Indigenous expert and the British Guardian journalist.
However, the charges against the other two accused – fellow fisher Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira (Oseney’s brother) and Jefferson da Silva Lima (also known as Pelado da Dinha) – were upheld, and they will face a jury trial.
This decision does not mean Oseney has been acquitted, as prosecutors can still appeal against the ruling or file a new charge against him. But he could be transferred from maximum security to house arrest if his lawyer submits a request, which he said yesterday he would, and if one of the judges grants it.
In a statement, Univaja, the Indigenous association where Pereira worked, said it “received the decision with indignation,” considering it “worrying” because “it may lead to … Oseney’s release”.
“According to evidence collected at the time by police during the investigation, the defendant was directly involved at the scene of the tragic murder of our friends Bruno and Dom,” it said.
Univaja also expressed “confidence” that prosecutors would appeal and said it expected the judiciary to “handle this case according to the evidence collected” and to conduct the process “in a proper and unimpeachable manner”.
Pereira and Phillips were ambushed and killed near the Amazon town of Atalaia do Norte while returning from a reporting trip to the entrance of one of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territories.
Months after the crime, public prosecutors had charged Oseney with double aggravated homicide – Amarildo and Silva Lima, who, unlike Oseney, confessed to the crime, were also charged with concealment of a corpse. Last May, a first-instance judge accepted the murder charges against all three, but Oseney’s lawyer appealed, leading to yesterday’s decision.
According to prosecutors, a witness had seen Oseney at the lake where Bruno and Dom were murdered, carrying a shotgun near the boat that Amarildo and Silva Lima were in.
In yesterday’s ruling, Judge Marcos Augusto de Souza said that “the fact that [Oseney] was carrying a shotgun – if it were in an urban area, it would have a different implication, but in a region near the border where subsistence hunting takes place … it’s common.”
Regarding his presence near the execution site, the judge said that “the testimonies of the two confessed defendants explicitly exclude Oseney from the crime scene, ie from the location and time when the crime was committed”, adding that “the indictment indeed doesn’t describe any action carried out by Oseney”.
Regarding the involvement of the other two, however, the judge said there was sufficient evidence for them to face a public jury trial for double homicide and concealment of a corpse.
No date has been set for Amarildo and Silva Lima’s jury trial, and public prosecutors have not yet announced whether they intend to appeal against the ruling on Oseney.
Oseney’s lawyer, Lucas Sá Souza, said during the trial that he would request house arrest because his client was ill, suffering from internal bleeding, and unable to undergo the necessary tests to diagnose his condition while in prison.
Pereira and Phillips were killed while travelling along the Itaquaí River on 5 June 2022. They had been visiting Indigenous patrol teams working to protect the Javari valley Indigenous territory, a vast expanse of rainforest believed to hold the world’s largest concentration of isolated Indigenous peoples.
The fishers are suspected of committing the crime on behalf of Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, whom police accuse of running a transnational illegal fishing network that exploits these protected Indigenous lands. Villar has also been arrested and charged. He denies any wrongdoing.
