Missing British journalist’s wife pleads with Brazil to find ‘love of my life’

The wife of the British journalist who has vanished in a remote corner of the Amazon with a celebrated Indigenous expert has issued an emotional plea for Brazilian authorities to work harder to find "the love of my life".

"I want to make an appeal to the federal government and the relevant organs to intensify their search efforts, because we still have some hope of finding them," Alessandra Sampaio, the wife of longtime Guardian contributor Dom Phillips, said in a tearful video message.

"Even if I don't find the love of my life alive, they must be found, please - intensify the search," Sampaio implored, breaking down as she spoke.

Phillips, 57, was last seen on Sunday morning travelling by boat through the remote Javari region with an Indigenous advocate, Bruno Araújo Pereira.

Days earlier, Pereira, who has spent years defending the region's isolated tribes for Brazil's Indigenous protection agency, reportedly received a written threat stemming from his opposition to illegal fishing gangs plundering the Javari's rivers. "We know who you are, and we'll find you to settle the score," it warned, according to the newspaper O Globo.

The pair were also threatened on Saturday, when a group of armed men brandished firearms at a patrol by members of the Univaja Indigenous association, according to the association's president Paulo Marubo. Phillips photographed the men at the time, Marubo told the Associated Press.

Brazilian police on Tuesday opened a criminal investigation into the men's disappearance.