Brazil's justice minister said Tuesday that the search continues in the Amazon rainforest for British journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, who have not been heard from since early this month.
Anderson Torres said the location where Phillips and Pereira disappeared in the Amazon is a complicated region, Brazil's official news agency Agencia Brasil reported.
Drawing attention to the work of the security forces, Torres said: "The search continues as I promised. I met with the U.S. and British ministers. I promised not to stop the search without using all the facilities in that area."
Phillips, 57, who works for the British-based newspaper The Guardian and traveled to the region to write a book on indigenous peoples in the Amazon, and Pereira, 41, an expert at the government-affiliated National Indigenous Foundation, have been missing since June 5.
Brazil's federal police said Tuesday they arrested a second suspect in connection with the disappearance of Amazon's missing pair.
The suspect, Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, 41, is a fisherman and a brother of the man so far considered by police as the main suspect in the case, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, also 41, nicknamed Pelado.
Federal police also said in a statement that they seized ammunition and an oar, but did not say why the items were confiscated, who they belonged to or where they were found.
De Oliveira told The Associated Press on Friday that he had visited Pelado in jail and was told that local police had tortured Pelado on his own boat, which was also seized by authorities.
Federal police did not immediately respond to an AP request asking why Oseney da Costa de Oliveira was named in its statement, which is not a standard procedure of the force.
Indigenous people who were with expert Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips have said that Pelado brandished a rifle at them on the day before the two men disappeared.
He has denied any wrongdoing and claims police tortured him to try to get a confession, his family told the AP.
The Javari Valley has seven known Indigenous groups — some only recently contacted, such as the Matis. The valley also has at least 11 uncontacted groups, making the region the largest concentration of isolated tribes in the world.
That area has seen violent conflicts between fishermen, poachers and government agents. Violence has grown as drug trafficking gangs battle for control of waterways to ship cocaine, although the Itaquai river is not a known drug trafficking route.
