Dom PHILLIPS

At the end of the year, trials continued of several men for the 2022 murder of British journalist and author Dom Phillips and Indigenous issues expert Bruno Pereira during a fact-finding trip in the Indigenous territory of the Javari Valley in the Brazilian Amazon. Phillips was working at the time on a book about sustainable development entitled How to Save the Amazon, and Pereira, who had close contacts with local Indigenous groups, was providing support with interviews. (See Case lists 2023/2024 and 2022). 

In January 2024, Brazilian police announced the arrest of another suspect, said to have close links to the alleged mastermind of the murders. In September 2024, a court dropped murder charges against one of the three initial suspects due to insufficient evidence, following an appeal by the suspect's lawyer. The other two suspects, who had confessed to the crime, remained charged. On 4 November 2024, the Brazilian federal police concluded that the murders of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira were driven by Pereira’s environmental monitoring work and his defence of Indigenous rights in Vale do Javari, an Indigenous territory. According to the final report, Rubens Villar Coelho (nicknamed Colômbia), head of an illegal fishing operation, provided ammunition to the killers and funded legal expenses for one of the initial suspects arrested. A total of nine individuals have been charged in connection with the murders and the concealment of the victims' bodies. 

Dom Phillips, born on 23 July 1964, worked as a freelance journalist for many international media outlets including the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Intercept. Most of his investigations were about environmental issues. In 2018, Phillips reported on the threats posed by illegal mining and cattle ranchers to uncontacted indigenous peoples in the Brazil’s Javari Valley. He is the author of the book Superstar DJs Here We Go!: The Rise and Fall of the Superstar DJ.