BRAZIL – Indigenous activists and lawyers in Brazil have voiced shock and dismay, after the federal police chief leading the investigation into the murders of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips was unexpectedly removed from the case.

Francisco Badenes, an experienced investigator, had been running the inquiry into the 2022 deaths of the Brazilian Indigenous expert and the British journalist since the second half of that year. Pereira and Phillips were ambushed and killed near the Amazon town of Atalaia do Norte, while returning from a reporting trip to the entrance of one of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territories. Badenes was also responsible for investigating the 2019 murder of Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, an officer from the Indigenous protection agency Funai who had worked with Pereira and was killed in the nearby border city Tabatinga.

Late last month, for reasons that remain unclear, the Brasília-based investigator was taken off both cases, as well as a third scrutinising a 2020 massacre allegedly perpetrated by military police officers in another part of the Amazon. Eliesio Marubo, a lawyer for Univaja, the Indigenous association where Pereira worked, said removing Badenes from those cases was “a big step backwards”. He feared it would hinder police investigations and efforts to combat the organised crime network suspected of committing those crimes and others.

“This is prejudicial [to the inquiry] … There needs to be a public interest justification for changing him – and I don’t see any kind of public interest justification here,” said Marubo, who was Pereira’s friend. Thais Rego Monteiro, a lawyer who represents Santos’s family, said they were “dismayed, saddened and disheartened” by reports that Badenes – who has spent much of the last 30 years investigating murders and death squads – had been removed. (The Guardian)…[+]