Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira: Murder charges against one of the three suspects dropped | Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira

Appeal judges in Brazil yesterday upheld the charges against only two of the three men accused of murdering Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips. Their decision was “received with outrage” by indigenous activists.

The three judges ruled that there was “insufficient evidence of authorship or involvement” of fisherman Oseney da Costa de Oliveira in the death of the Brazilian indigenous peoples expert and British Guardian journalist in 2022.

However, the charges against the other two defendants – fellow fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira (Oseney's brother) and Jefferson da Silva Lima (also known as Pelado da Dinha) – were upheld and they will face a jury trial.

This decision does not mean that Oseney has been acquitted, as prosecutors can still appeal the verdict or file new charges against him. But he could be transferred from the maximum security prison to house arrest if his lawyer makes a request to that effect, as he said yesterday, and if one of the judges grants the request.

Univaja, the indigenous association where Pereira worked, said in a statement that it had “received the decision with outrage” and considered it “worrying” because it “could lead to the release of … Oseney.”

“According to the evidence collected by the police during the investigation at the time, the defendant was directly involved in the tragic murder of our friends Bruno and Dom at the crime scene,” it said.

Univaja also expressed his “confidence” that the prosecution would appeal and expressed the expectation that the judiciary would “treat this case on the basis of the evidence collected” and conduct the proceedings “in an orderly and impeccable manner”.

Pereira and Phillips were ambushed and killed near the Amazon town of Atalaia do Norte as they returned from a reporting trip to the entrance to one of Brazil's largest indigenous territories.

Months after the crime, prosecutors charged Oseney with two counts of aggravated manslaughter – Amarildo and Silva Lima, who unlike Oseney confessed to the crime, were also charged with concealing bodies. Last May, a judge in the first instance admitted murder charges against all three, but Oseney's lawyer appealed, leading to yesterday's decision.

According to prosecutors, a witness saw Oseney with a shotgun near the boat carrying Amarildo and Silva Lima at the lake where Bruno and Dom were murdered.

In his ruling yesterday, Judge Marcos Augusto de Souza said: “The fact that [Oseney] was carrying a shotgun – if this had happened in an urban area it would have a different meaning, but in a region near the border where subsistence hunting is practiced … it is common.”

Regarding his presence near the place of execution, the judge said that “the statements of the two confessed defendants expressly exclude Oseney from the crime scene, that is, from the place and time of the commission of the crime,” adding that “the indictment does not in fact describe any of Oseney's actions.”

However, regarding the involvement of the other two, the judge said there was enough evidence to try them before a public jury for double murder and concealment of corpses.

No date has been set for the jury trial of Amarildo and Silva Lima, and prosecutors have not announced whether they plan to appeal the verdict in the Oseney case.

Oseney's lawyer Lucas Sá Souza stated during the trial that he would request house arrest because his client was ill, suffering from internal bleeding and could not undergo the necessary tests to diagnose his condition in prison.

Pereira and Phillips died on June 5, 2022, while traveling along the Itaquaí River while visiting indigenous patrol teams working to protect indigenous territory in the Javari Valley, a vast rainforest area believed to be home to the largest concentration of isolated indigenous peoples in the world.

The fishermen are suspected of having committed the crime on behalf of Ruben Dario da Silva Villar, who police accuse of leading a transnational illegal fishing network that exploits these protected indigenous territories. Villar was also arrested and charged.