The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has said he believes “something wicked” was done to the missing British journalist Dom Phillips and the Brazilian Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, amid unconfirmed claims their bodies had been found in the Amazon.
British relatives of Phillips said they had been contacted by the Brazilian embassy in London on Monday morning and informed that two unidentified bodies had been found during the search operation.
“He didn’t describe the location and just said it was in the rainforest and he said they were tied to a tree and they hadn’t been identified yet,” said Phillips’s brother-in-law, Paul Sherwood.
However, the federal police later denied the claims that two bodies had been found. Indigenous activists involved in the search effort also said they had no information about such a discovery but do believe the men’s remains will soon be found in an area of flooded forest where their search teams found some of the men’s belongings on Saturday.
Speaking to Brazilian radio on Monday, Bolsonaro said the evidence gathered by investigators suggested the two men, who went missing on the morning of 5 June while travelling by boat along the River Itaquaí, were unlikely to be found alive.
Bolsonaro said tests were being conducted on suspected human material found floating in one of the region’s rivers. “The indications are that something wicked was done to them,” the president added.
SOURCE:THE GUARDIAN
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