Bruno and Dom: PF changed the command of the investigation 3 times – 06/01/2023 – Daily life

It is from a room in the Unit for Repression of Homicide, in the Directorate for Investigation and Combating Organized Crime of the Federal Police, in the MultiBrasil Corporate Building, in Brasília, 2,281 km away from Atalaia do Norte (AM), that police chief Francisco Badenes Júnior works on the investigation into the murders of indigenist Bruno Pereira and English journalist Dom Phillips.

In one year, the investigation went through the hands of three delegates, without advancing in the identification and, above all, in the indictment of a person who ordered the executions.

Chief Badenes Júnior also works remotely in the investigation related to the murder of Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, which took place on September 6, 2019.

Max, as he was known, worked with the indigenist Bruno Pereira at Funai (National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples). Both became known in the Javari Valley for their implacable inspection against predatory expeditions in the demarcated territory. Like the indigenist, Max was murdered after being removed from Funai during the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL).

Max was executed with two gunshots to the head in front of the woman and stepdaughter, in Tabatinga, a Brazilian city bordering Letícia, Colombia, and Santa Rosa, Peru. Two days before the crime, he had commanded the seizure of a vessel loaded with fish and animals illegally captured in the TI (Indigenous Land) Vale do Javari.

Despite the success of the operation, Max was removed from Funai’s Environmental and Territorial Management Service of the Vale do Javari Regional Coordination, where he worked for five years. The killer of Maxciel dos Santos remains unpunished.

The case of the former Funai employee was once again investigated by the PF after the executions of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, on June 5, 2022. The decision to reopen the investigation was taken in view of the evidence of the alleged involvement of a criminal organization in the three deaths.

In October 2022, Maxciel’s body was exhumed and taken to Brasília, where it underwent further analyses. The investigations continue under secrecy, but without effective results.

Three delegates in ten months

Badenes Júnior is the third delegate appointed by the Federal Police to coordinate the investigations related to the deaths of the English journalist and the indigenist.

In the first days after the crime, the PF Superintendence of Manaus sent delegate Domingos Sávio to Atalaia do Norte. It is in the municipality of just over 18,000 inhabitants, on the banks of the Javari River, that most of the demarcated territory that makes up the IL Vale do Javari is concentrated.

Domingos Sávio took over the investigation, initially conducted by delegate Alex Perez, from the Civil Police of Amazonas, in Atalaia do Norte. During this period, the joint work, which included the participation of the surveillance team of the União dos Povos Indígenas do Vale do Javari (Univaja), led to the arrest of Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, known as Pelado.

Suspicions fell on the fisherman due to his history of invading indigenous lands. Pelado had also already made death threats to indigenist Bruno Pereira.

From Pelado’s prison, the police reached Jefferson da Silva Lima, known as Pelado da Dinha, and Oseney da Costa de Oliveira, Amarildo’s brother, known as Dos Santos. The investigations continued with the discovery of the remains of Bruno and Dom, buried in an area of ​​dense forest just over a kilometer from the bank of the Itacoaí River, in an area close to Oseney’s house.

After failures in conducting the inquiry involving the three suspects, the justices of the 4th Panel of the TRF-1, in Manaus, decided to return the process to the investigation phase, on May 16, 2023. investigation has not been completed.

The original investigation was split into two parts: one aimed at identifying others involved in the murders of Dom, Bruno and Maxciel, whose name was included in this new phase.

A second inquiry was opened to investigate the criminal organization involved in the invasions for predatory hunting and fishing within the IL Vale do Javari. As of the dismemberment, just over a month after the executions of Bruno and Dom, the two investigations became the responsibility of the delegate Lawrence Guimarães Cunha, who worked in Amazonas —part in the PF of Tabatinga and another in the Superintendence in Manaus, which is 1,136 km.

Delegate Lawrence Cunha was transferred at the end of March 2023 to a PF unit in the South region. Earlier, he reported on the investigation into the criminal organization that allegedly finances Rubens Dário da Silva Villar, Colombia, who is under arrest and is suspected of leading a transnational gang involved in drug trafficking on the triple border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia.

On the eve of completing ten months of the murders of Bruno and Dom, the investigations changed hands again, passing to the delegate Badenes Júnior, who dispatches from his office thousands of kilometers from Atalaia do Norte, where the crimes took place.

The constant changes in the conduct of investigations only increased the disbelief among activists and indigenous people of the Vale do Javari about the outcome of the work.

“In the beginning, when the delegate responsible for the investigation was in the region, there was talk of reaching the principal or principals. We hear that there are politicians who maintained relations with Amarildo Pelado and other invaders of the indigenous land, some profiting from this illegal trade in animals, wood and fish extracted clandestinely from the demarcated territory”, reported an activist to the Tim Lopes Program, from Abraji (Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism).

Friend of Bruno Pereira and collaborator in several of the investigations conducted by the indigenist since the days of Funai and at Univaja, where Pereira started to work after being exonerated from his post in the government of Jair Bolsonaro, the activist fears that the PF investigations will be limited to prisons of Pelado, Pelado da Dinha and dos Santos. The three suspects arrested in the first month of work.

“Pelado no longer lived in São Gabriel. Around here everyone knew about his connection with Colombia, so much so that he moved with his wife to Benjamin Constant. He was the link in the scheme with the riverside people of São Gabriel and São Rafael, but he kept connections with politicians from Atalaia do Norte. It is enough to see that some of his relatives, involved in the predatory invasions, were named in the municipality.”

The activist, who has not been identified for security reasons, was with the Tim Lopes Program reporting team on the two occasions the journalists went to Atalaia do Norte to follow developments in a year of investigation.

The Abraji team returned to the municipality in March 2023. During this period, the Unijava coordinator, Bushe Matis, stated that predatory invasions of the IL continued to happen, but in smaller numbers.

“Especially now, that the Federal Police sent a large boat to stay in the port. Over at the junction between the Javari and Itacoaí rivers, on the way to the demarcated territory, the Army is maintaining a vessel. This inhibits the action of predators “, Mattis said.

The presence of the police and the military contributed to an increased sense of security, especially among the indigenous people who live in Atalaia do Norte, but it does not represent the end of predatory actions in the IL —as Abraji showed in a report published on April 4, 2023, when the team spotted two boats loaded with hardwood boards hidden in the middle of the vegetation.

In general, those involved in predatory expeditions know the region well and use the boreholes, as riverside dwellers and indigenous people refer to stretches of forest flooded when the river floods, to evade inspection.

In the same month, PF agents guided by the Univaja surveillance team found and seized part of the vessels with wood extracted from the TI.

Hours after the seizure, armed men invaded the IL and threatened indigenous people of the Kanamari and Marubo ethnic groups. A PF team went to the scene, but failed to arrest the aggressors. The information was confirmed to Abraji in an interview with delegate Daniela Aparecida Martins Vales, who was on duty on the Nova Era vessel.

According to Vales, the PF teams take turns on duty shifts of 12 to 15 days in the region.

Univaja against biopiracy

As soon as he started working directly with Univaja, after being removed from Funai, Bruno Pereira began to train surveillance teams made up of indigenous people from the Javari Valley to map and georeference the activities of invaders in the demarcated territory. The indigenist was concerned about the actions of biopirates, who generally do not attract as much attention as those involved in predatory hunting, fishing and gold or timber extraction.

As Abraji showed in a report on June 28, 2022, the indigenist was in the habit of carrying out investigations in parallel with the work he carried out at Funai, such as mapping the merchants in Atalaia do Norte involved in a scheme to retain bank cards and benefits indigenous social.

Before being executed, Bruno was investigating the alleged connection of invaders to the IL Vale do Javari within the municipal administration.

The indigenist used technological tools to prepare the maps, most often using his cell phone to georeference points of interest. These techniques were being passed on to indigenous people on the Univaja surveillance teams. In this way, Bruno planned to turn the group members into multipliers.

Its objective was to determine with greater precision the places where IT invaders operated, pointing out in each registered area the type of illegal activity in progress. It was with this technique that the indigenist accurately mapped dozens of gold extraction rafts on the Jandiatuba River, a tributary of the Amazon.

The work resulted in a mega-operation to combat illegal mining, launched a week after the execution of his friend Maxciel dos Santos.

Operation Korubo led to the destruction of 60 rafts used in clandestine mining, causing losses of millions of reais to the financers of the predatory activity. Fifteen days later, Bruno Pereira was exonerated from the Funai staff by the then executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Luiz Pontel, named in a report by UOL as a trusted man of the then Minister Sergio Moro.

An excerpt from the report was used by the lawyers for the confessed killers of Bruno and Dom to justify the summoning of Sergio Moro as a witness for the defense of the defendants, as shown on page 14 of the Question of Order presented to the Federal Court of Tabatinga.

In the same document, the lawyers request the inclusion of former president Jair Bolsonaro in the list of defense witnesses. The court rejected the requests.

change of delegates

In an interview with Abraji’s Tim Lopes Program, the National Secretary of Justice, Augusto de Arruda Botelho, said that the change of delegates in conducting an inquiry could interfere with the progress of investigations. “In an ideal world, you should always remain with the same authority presiding over the investigation so that it can follow the same line,” he says.

In relation to the fact that the third delegate assigned to preside over the inquiries into the deaths of Dom Phillips, Bruno Pereira and Maxciel dos Santos is more than 2,000 km from the crime scenes, Botelho said that the distance does not necessarily interfere in the case.

“With the current forms of virtual communication, collection of testimonies and other steps that do not need to be carried out in loco, distance does not necessarily bring any harm to the investigation”, he points out.

The national secretary was referring to the use of the internet. However, in Atalaia do Norte, data transmission over the networks is extremely unstable – as stated by the delegate interviewed by Abraji. An example of the difficulty in communication was the cancellation of witness statements at the Tabatinga Court, which should have taken place in March 2023.

This report, produced by Abraji (Brazilian Journalism Association) Investigative), he does part of O Projeto Bruno e Dom, an international press consortium involving more than 50 journalists from 16 media organizations, coordinated by Forbbiden Stories, an entity dedicated to continuing the work of journalists murdered in the course of their work. A Sheet joins the consortium.