BRASILIA — A Brazilian judge has allowed one of the
suspects in the murder of British journalist
Dom Phillips and Brazilian
Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira to be released on bail to house arrest, local
media said on Monday.
اضافة اعلان
Ruben da Silva
Villar, also known as “Colombia”, was released last Friday, according to local
press reports, after a ruling made three days earlier and which AFP gained
access to on Monday.
Federal judge
Fabiano Verli ruled that Villar, who had been in custody since July, could pay
15,000 Brazilian reais — about $2,800 dollars — and await trial at an address
in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas.
“The favored
person is not a child and must strictly comply with the conditions for this
legal favor,” Verli ruled, stipulating that the accused must present himself to
authorities in Manaus every month and will be monitored by means of an
electronic device on his ankle.
Phillips, 57,
and Pereira, 41, were shot dead on June 5 in the Javari Valley, a jungle region
near the Brazilian border with
Peru and Colombia which is plagued by illegal
fishing, logging, mining, and drug trafficking.
Pereira had been
working to stop illegal fishing in the Javari Valley indigenous reserve, a
territory larger than Austria, with the largest concentration of uncontacted
tribes on Earth.
Phillips, a
freelance journalist for The Guardian, the New York Times, and other
newspapers, was traveling with him to write a book called “How to Save the
Amazon”.
Native leaders
cooperating with Pereira accused Villar of ordering the expert’s death for
organizing Indigenous patrols that seized lucrative hauls of illegally caught
fish.
Police have said
Villar, a suspected drug trafficker, led a group “responsible for selling large
amounts of fish for export to neighboring countries”.
During his house
arrest, Villar will not be able to leave the country and he has been forced to
surrender his passport.
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