Post-mortems conducted by foreign team – Govt pathologist

Lindo Creek CoI

– says he never participated

As the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into the Lindo Creek massacre continued, Government Pathologist, Dr Nehaul Singh on Thursday testified that he became aware that the post-mortem examinations (PMs) were conducted by a foreign team and that he was introduced to the pathologist.

He, however, informed the Commission that at no time did a local pathologist perform examinations on the eight dead miners.
Dr Singh has performed over 25,000 PMEs and testified over 5000 times. He stated during his testimony before Commission Chairman, retired Judge Donald Trotman that it was on Saturday, June 21, 2008, that he received information on the killings. The Pathologist observed that he along with two mortuary attendants travelled up to Kwakwani the following day. However upon arriving at a nearby camp, he could not reach Lindo Creek because of the conditions to reach that location. He recalled that Police Officers who were present went to the creek.
“We were there at the old camp sitting in the rain and they came back about almost an hour and a half after 5pm and they showed me some pictures on a camera of some bones and skulls but the rain was falling and you couldn’t see anything much,” he noted.
While watching the news on Monday, June 23, 2008, Dr Singh also recalled that he heard the Police brought out the bones from Lindo Creek, which were wrapped in tarpaulin; this was before the time he learnt that foreigners conducted the post-mortem examinations on the eight miners. He added that a Joint Services team had gathered at Prime Minister Samuel Hinds’ residence for updates on the situation. Hinds, he noted, was acting President.
Singh stressed that he was never contacted to do an independent autopsy. He noted that he thought his team would have been given orders to conduct the PMEs as practiced on the Wednesday. The doctor however claimed that late Police Commissioner, Henry Greene, called him and informed him that the foreign experts would conduct the examinations.
“He said that the experts would be coming from Jamaica and that they would be doing the examination and I told him frank that I am not going to be observing or working together with that person,” Singh said.
Dr Singh also testified that he was introduced to the foreign doctor, an Indian national with the Jamaican team, who said he was hired to conduct the PMEs.
“He was one of the persons who came to the office on a Tuesday and he said that he, along with his team, was retained by Government to conduct post-mortems on the remains so I took him downstairs and showed him where the (Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation) mortuary was. I introduced him to the staff and that was the end of my participation,” Dr Singh observed.
The Government Pathologist however said that he never saw any PME report from the foreign Pathologist. Singh later on stated that conducting PMEs would have been difficult because the bones of the miners were stored together and not in eight separate bags.
“You got to be careful how you removing these things. The problem is that you need to get it separated as much as possible. You just can’t go and scoop them up and put them in a bag and bring them,” he stressed.
He also declared that the miners’ bones should have been buried in a mausoleum so that relatives could have closure and that the bones could have been easily exhumed from this location. More than that, he however stated that it would be difficult to gather any findings from exhumation since 10 years have passed and much of the bones would be disintegrated. The veteran Pathologist also recalled that during 2008, he told then Commissioner Greene that examining bones would be easier if Guyana had an anthropologist and Singh noted that he even told him that he had a friend from overseas who was willing to take up the post.
Sometime between June 12, 2008 and June 24, 2008, miners Cecil Arokium, Dax Arokium, Compton Speirs, Horace Drakes, Clifton Wong, Lancelot Lee, Bonny Harry and Nigel Torres were shot and killed, and their bodies burnt at the Upper Berbice River mining camp, which was being operated by Leonard Arokium.
The Lindo Creek CoI is the first of what the coalition Government has said would be a series of inquiries into the hundreds of killings which occurred during a crime wave that began in 2002. Justice Trotman in a recent televised interview said however that the 10-year time lapse is proving to be a disadvantage as the Commission does its work, especially since some of the key persons involved have either died or emigrated. Nevertheless, the public hearings will continue on March 27 at 13:30h.