Sharjah24 – AFP: Pressure mounted Wednesday on Brazil's government to redouble efforts to find a British journalist and Brazilian indigenous expert missing in the Amazon, as the search entered its fourth day and a suspect was reportedly detained.
High-profile figures including football legend Pele and current star Richarlison led calls for the authorities to get to the bottom of what happened to Dom Phillips, 57, and Bruno Pereira, 41, who disappeared early Sunday in the remote Javari Valley, near Brazil's border with Peru.
President Jair Bolsonaro's government faces accusations of failing to scale up the search fast enough in the far-flung region, which has seen a surge of illegal fishing, drug trafficking and other invasions of protected indigenous lands in recent years.
Brazil insisted it was reinforcing the operation, as local media reported that a suspect had been detained.
A man accused of threatening indigenous inhabitants searching for the missing men was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the disappearance, O Globo newspaper reported.
Police in the northern state of Amazonas said they had questioned five people in all, one of whom was a suspect, without giving further details.
Indigenous activists say Phillips and Pereira received threats the week they disappeared.
Pereira, formerly the head of Brazilian indigenous agency FUNAI's operations in the region, has been a frequent target of death threats for his work fighting illegal logging, mining and poaching.
"We have reinforced the search operation since yesterday," Justice Minister Anderson Torres wrote on Twitter.
The navy said it had sent a helicopter, boats and a jet ski to assist, and the army said it had deployed 150 jungle operations specialists and an additional helicopter.
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