Int’l jurists, investigators to probe murder of Berbice boys, Reg. 5 unrest

Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall has announced that international jurists and investigators will be hired to work on the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the brutal murders of 16-year-old Isaiah Henry, his cousin 18-year-old Joel Henry and 17-year-old Haresh Singh.

The three boys resided at Number Three Village, West Coast Berbice (WCB); the mutilated bodies of the teen cousins were found on September 6 with several chop wounds in Cotton Tree WCB.

Their gruesome murders sparked protests across the country which subsequently turned violent in Region Five and resulted in persons being robbed, beaten and their vehicles damaged.

Three days after the Henry boys were killed, Singh was discovered in a bloodied state in a rice field on the way to his farm on September 9. He died while on the way to the New Amsterdam Hospital.

He was found unconscious by his 12-year-old brother while his motorcycle was found torched.

President Irfaan Ali had promised a high level CoI to investigate the murders of the boys.

“His Excellency has already pledged to the people of this country that a Commission of Inquiry of high quality will be established to investigate the horrendous tragedy that occurred at Region Five over the past three weeks and Mr Speaker once instructed, the Legal Affairs Ministry will spearhead that initiative and is being assured here that international jurists will be recruited and the highest quality of investigators are going to come to work along with the Commission so that we can get to the bottom of what happened to those unfortunate souls in West Coast Berbice,” Nandlall told the National Assembly on Friday during the 2020 budget debate.

With 75 ranks from the Joint Services and a pathologist, the Guyana Police Force combed the backlands of Number Two and Three Villages on Thursday with the hope of finding the area where the teen cousins were killed.

The ranks came up empty-handed even with aerial support via a helicopter from the Guyana Defence Force.

The search was done after investigators determined that the two teenagers were murdered somewhere else and then dumped in the backlands of Cotton Tree, and with no solid case against the suspects, all of them were released and placed on station bail.

A Post Mortem Examination (PME) found that they both died from haemorrhage and shock due to multiple incised injuries including severed spines.

The killers carved out a huge ‘X’ on Isaiah’s head while they cut open Joel’s chest. They had left their Number 3 Village home to go into the backdam to pick coconuts on September 5 and that was the last time they were seen alive.

A post mortem examination found that Singh died from brain haemorrhage and blunt trauma to the head, compounded by compression injuries to the neck.