Nube Oma Kulina, a 24-year-old member of a recently contacted indigenous people from the middle Juruá River, in Amazonas state, has been missing for three months after being released from a prison in Manaus, about 1,200 km in a straight line from his village. The case was revealed on Friday (28) by Folha de S.Paulo, the only outlet to report the story so far.

Nube was in pretrial detention at a police station in Envira, a municipality in the middle Juruá region of southern Amazonas, when a court ordered his transfer to the state capital. According to Folha, his release warrant is dated May 28 and bears the stamp of CDPM II, a provisional detention center in Manaus, marked "released" and signed by Nube in print letters. Since then, relatives in the villages, indigenous organizations, the courts, the public prosecutor's office and Funai, Brazil's national indigenous affairs agency, have had no word of his whereabouts.

Release without notice to Funai or family

The release took place without any notice from the state prison system to public defenders, relatives or Funai, the report says. In cases involving recently contacted indigenous people, that notification is required because they usually do not speak Portuguese, are not familiar with the workings of a city the size of Manaus, a capital of about 2 million people, and have no relatives or support networks in the area.

Faced with the silence, the Amazonas Public Defender's Office formally asked the state government for explanations about the arrest, the transfer and the release. A missing person report was filed at a Manaus police station following action by the Defender's Office and Funai.

The madiha Kulina, Nube's ethnic group, are classified by Funai as a recently contacted people. They keep their own cultural system in villages along the middle Juruá, do not master Portuguese and struggle with urban life. Brazil's Constitution and ILO Convention 169, ratified by the country, provide for special protection of indigenous peoples, including in their contact with the justice system.

The Amazonas state government did not answer Folha's questions, sent by email and WhatsApp between Tuesday (25) and Friday (28). The newspaper also tried to reach both prison units involved in the case, CDPM II and the Puraquequara facility, but the phones went unanswered. As of publication, no state agency had explained the circumstances of the release or reported any search effort for the indigenous man.