President Irfaan Ali says that forensic evidence obtained by the police in the murders of teenaged cousins Isiah and Joel Henry has been sent to St. Lucia for testing.
Ali made this disclosure on Tuesday while responding to questions during an interview with reporters Denis Chabrol and Nazima Raghubir.
A five-member team from the Regional Security System (RSS) arrived here on Monday to assist the Guyana Police Force (GPF) with the investigation into the murders of the Henrys as well as Haresh Singh, which occurred at West Coast Berbice (WCB) almost a month ago.
According to Ali, there is a cost attached to the team being here but he said that is “small” compared to the main focus which is to ensure that the perpetrator/s of the crimes are brought to justice.
“….Yes, there is some support cost attached to having them here but you know the cost is a small issue in relation to what we are hoping to achieve and that is bringing these people to justice….I made a commitment that all the tools available, all the resources available must be utilized in bringing the perpetrators of these crimes to justice,” Ali explained.
“So this team from the region they are here to support the Guyana Police Force. Technical support, investigative support, evidence gathering support, and a matter of fact we also have a team that has left to St. Lucia with some of the evidence, so we do a more detailed analysis. So that is going on at the same time,” he added.
Isaiah, 16, a student at the Woodley Park Secondary School and Joel, 18, who worked at the Blairmont Estate, went missing on Saturday, September 5th, after they left home for the Cotton Tree backlands to pick coconuts.
After they did not return home, relatives lodged missing persons’ reports with the police and subsequently launched a search. It was while searching that the bodies of the teens were discovered.
Autopsies performed on the bodies of the teenagers showed that they both died from haemorrhage and shock due to multiple wounds.
Days after this, another teenager, Haresh Singh, was also murdered in what is believed to be a reprisal killing.
About three weeks ago, the police had said that investigations revealed that the Henrys were not killed at the location where their bodies were found.
The police had said that the bodies of the cousins were found about 600 feet from each other in clumps of bushes near to a coconut farm on the WCB. “…Preliminary findings showed that the bodies of the Henry boys were discovered at a secondary crime scene,” the police in a statement had said.
This means that the heinous murders were not committed where the bodies were found. “Person(s) moved the bodies after the murder and placed them at the locations where they were subsequently discovered,” the police added.
Forensic evidence was found at the secondary crime scene and has since been collected, preserved and submitted to the Guyana Forensic Science Laboratory (GFSL) for DNA analysis.
The police had also said that DNA samples were also collected from the suspects who were in custody and sent for a comparative analysis to be conducted against the forensic evidence collected from the secondary crime scene.
Director of the GFSL Delon France had previously told Stabroek News that the standard turnaround time for samples to be processed upon receipt is 30 days. However, France had said he has related to the police that the results from the Henrys’ case should be available in three weeks.
When contacted for an update last evening, France told Stabroek News that a decision was taken to send the samples overseas due to the urgency to have the results as soon as possible.
According to France, the GFSL is currently operating and has the capability of conducting the tests but not in the time span in which the results are needed in this case.
The RSS team comprises officials from countries within the Regional Investiga-tive Management Systems (RIMS).
