PF indicts ex-president of Funai for omission in Bruno e Dom case

The Federal Police have indicted former president of the National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples (Funai) Marcelo Xavier for possible fraud in the murders of Brazilian indigenist Bruno Pereira and English journalist Dom Phillips, killed in June 2022 in an ambush in the Amazon region. The former vice-president of the then National Indian Foundation, Alcir Amaral Teixeira, was also indicted. In a note, the Federal Police says that Xavier and Teixeira became aware, at a Funai meeting on October 9, 2019, of the “risk to the life of the agency’s employees and did not adopt the necessary measures to protect employees”. Bruno was a Funai employee and was licensed. According to the PF, for failing to take action, Marcelo Xavier and Alcir Teixeira “would have assumed the risk of the result of their omissions, which culminated in the double homicide”. Marcelo Xavier was removed from Funai’s command in December 2022. He took office in July 2019. Case of Bruno and Dom Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips were killed near the Indigenous Land of Vale do Javari, in Amazonas. They articulated a joint effort to denounce socio-environmental crimes in the Vale do Javari region, where there is the highest concentration of isolated and recently contacted peoples in the world. In the Vale do Javari Indigenous Land, there are 64 villages of 26 peoples and around 6,300 people. The police authorities placed under suspicion at least eight people, for their possible participation in the homicides and in the concealment of the corpses. The Fourth Panel of the Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF1) decided this week to annul the testimony of three accused of the murders. According to the decision, the depositions of the defendants Amarildo da Costa Oliveira, Oseney da Costa Oliveira and Jefferson da Silva Lima must be annulled and collected again. In statements last week, the defendants reversed the confession they had made to the police and began to support a version according to which they acted in self-defense. It was the first time that the three appeared before the judge.

Agência Brasil