TRF-1 meets MPF and allows progress in the trial of those responsible for the deaths of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips

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With this decision, the actions will again be treated separately, allowing two of the three executors already pronounced, Amarildo da Costa Oliveira, alias Pelado, and Jefferson da Silva Lima, to appear in court with jury. It remains to be decided whether the trial will take place in Manaus, as defended by the MPF which believes that the capital offers greater independence to the jurors, or in Tabatinga.

— The objective of the MPF is to guarantee the speed of the process, so that the executors are judged as quickly as possible by the Court with Jury — explains Tabatinga prosecutor Guilherme Leal, who filed the case.

The order accepts the MPF’s argument that the unification of actions violated the principle of reasonable duration of the process. Each core of the case, executors, managers, body hiders, and criminal organization, are in different stages, with no simultaneous conclusion expected. The Department of Internal Affairs emphasized, in responding to the request, that the separation of actions is legally possible and necessary to ensure speed, recalling a previous decision of the High Court of Justice which also authorized the separation.

— The decision of the Department of Internal Affairs of the TRF-1 is in line with the previous decision of the Superior Court of Justice, which authorized the dismemberment of the process for greater agility, also taking into account the repercussion of the crime on the international scene and the need for a rapid response on the part of the Brazilian State — evaluates the prosecutor Samir Nachef Júnior, coordinator of the Support Group for Court Juries of the Criminal Chamber of the MPF, who works in support for the natural prosecutor of the case.

The measure comes in a context of fear in the Vale do Javari region, which has gone three years without conviction of the accused. An O GLOBO report published in June showed how the feeling of insecurity persists among indigenous people, federal employees and local leaders, despite the arrest of suspects and the strengthening of operations by the federal police, the national force and the army.

Even with the work of the Univaja monitoring team, created by Bruno himself and which has increased the number of monitors in recent years, reports of threats remain frequent. Unidentified drones monitoring official bases, weapons seizures, foiled ambushes and invasions of communities reinforce the impression that organized crime remains active on the triple border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia.

The PF emphasizes that the assassinations took place on June 5, 2022, during an ambush on the banks of the Itaquaí River. After a high-speed chase, Bruno and Dom were shot, their boat sunk and their bodies hidden in a difficult-to-access area, later found more than three kilometers from the river bank.

In addition to the executors, the police charged Peruvian Rubén Dario da Silva Villar, originally from Colombia, as organizer of the crime. Imprisoned since 2022, he is suspected of having financed criminal activities linked to illegal fishing used to launder money from drug trafficking, in addition to having supplied the cartridges used in the double homicide and to having coordinated the concealment of the bodies. Colombia is also under investigation for ordering the assassination of Funai collaborator Maxciel Pereira dos Santos in 2019.

The Javari Valley, Brazil’s second largest indigenous land and the area home to the most isolated peoples on the planet, remains under heavy pressure from drug traffickers, hunters, illegal fishermen and miners. Since 2023, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples (MPI) has been coordinating a territory protection plan which has already given rise to dozens of operations, seizures and fines. However, indigenous peoples report that the permanent presence of inspection bodies is still insufficient to contain invasions.