On Friday, federal police announced they had found “organic material” that was “apparently human”, raising hopes of a breakthrough in the search for reporter Dom Phillips and his traveling companion, indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.
However, a federal police officer and a state detective, who both requested anonymity to discuss the case, said the location and state of the material raised doubts about its connection to missing men.
A federal police spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The remains were found near the port of Atalaia do Norte, a town more than 65km downstream from where Phillips and Pereira were last seen on a slow flowing river, the sources said. The condition of the material suggests that it could be remains from a nearby butcher rather than remains transported far downstream, they added.
One of the sources said it seemed likely the material was from an animal and not a human, but was sent for forensic analysis out of an abundance of caution. The other said that the origin would only be clear after this analysis.
Witnesses said they last saw Phillips, a freelance reporter who writes for the Guardian and the Washington Post, on Sunday. His companion Pereira, an expert on local tribes, had been a senior official with the indigenous government agency Funai.
The pair were on a reporting trip to the remote jungle area near the border with Peru and Colombia, home to the world’s largest number of uncontacted indigenous populations. This wild and lawless region has attracted gangs of cocane smugglers, as well as loggers, miners and illegal hunters.
The couple’s disappearance has had a global echo, with Brazilian icons from soccer great Pel to singer Caetano Veloso joining politicians, environmentalists and human rights activists in calling on President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search .
State police inspectors involved in the investigation told Reuters they were focusing on poachers and illegal fishers in the area, who often clashed with Pereira as he organized indigenous patrols in the local reserve.
Police have arrested a fisherman, Amarildo da Costa, known locally as “Pelado”, for possession of a weapon and are holding him while they investigate whether he was involved in the men’s disappearance.
Lawyers and Costa’s family said he was fishing the river legally and denied he had any role in the men’s disappearance.
Some 150 soldiers have been deployed via riverboats to search for the missing men and interview local people, joining indigenous search parties who have been searching for the two men since Sunday.