Brazil police sceptical of 'apparently human' remains in Dom Phillips search

UK journalist and travel companion missing in Amazon rainforest since last Sunday

Searchers in Brazil are looking for Dom Phillips, above, and Bruno Pereira. AFP

Investigators in Brazil are sceptical that remains found in a river could be from a British journalist who went missing in the Amazon rainforest on Sunday, two police officers involved in the case told Reuters.

On Friday, federal police had announced finding “organic material” that was “apparently human”, raising expectations of a breakthrough in the search for Dom Phillips and his travel companion, indigenous expert Bruno Pereira.

However, a federal police officer and a state detective said the location of the material and its condition raised doubts about whether it could be connected to the missing men.

Federal police did not respond to requests for comment.

The remains were found near the port of Atalaia do Norte, a town more than 65 kilometres downstream from where Phillips and Pereira were last seen on a slow-moving river, the sources said.

The condition of the material suggested it could have been scraps from a nearby butcher's rather than remains carried far downstream, they said.

One of the sources said it seemed likely the material was animal and not human, but that it had been sent for forensic analysis.

Witnesses said they last saw Phillips, a freelance reporter who had written for The Guardian and The Washington Post, last Sunday. Mr Pereira, an expert on local tribes, had been a senior official with government indigenous agency Funai.

The two men were on a reporting trip in the remote jungle area near the border with Peru and Colombia that is home to the world's largest number of uncontacted indigenous people. The region has lured cocaine-smuggling gangs, along with illegal loggers, miners and hunters.

The pair's disappearance has resonated in Brazil, with public figures from football great Pele to singer Caetano Veloso joining politicians, environmentalists and human rights campaigners in urging President Jair Bolsonaro to step up the search.

State police detectives involved in the investigation have told Reuters they are focusing on poachers and illegal fisherman in the area, who clashed often with Pereira as he organised indigenous patrols of the local reservation.

Police have arrested one fisherman, Amarildo da Costa, known locally as Pelado, on a weapons charge and are keeping him in custody as they investigate whether he is involved in the men's disappearance

Mr Costa's lawyers and family have said he fished legally on the river and denied he had any role in the disappearance.

About 150 soldiers had been sent on riverboats to search for the men and interview locals, joining indigenous search teams who have been looking for the pair since Sunday.