THE remains of the eight miners who were killed at Lindo Creek in 2008 were buried in Georgetown’s Le Repentir Cemetery on Tuesday, after a funeral service at Lyken Funeral Parlour.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, Law Enforcement, Seelall Persaud, yesterday said the GPF has since received the final report from its Jamaican counterpart as it relates to the identification of the remains, and there is no need for the remains to be stored any longer.
He added that three of the eight remains were identified and the relatives were informed, but only one showed up for the funeral service at Lyken on Tuesday.
Persaud said the government paid the funeral expenses, as it did for the storage of the remains prior to burial.
The Ministry of Home Affairs, in a press release on January 3, 2012, said that following a report about the deaths of Cecil Arokium and seven other miners, which occurred between June 12 and 24, 2008 at Arokium Mining Camp, Lindo Creek, Upper Berbice River, the Guyana Police Force (GPF), honouring its obligation, commenced an investigation.
Evidence found at the crime scene suggested that persons in the camp were burnt to the extent that none of them was identifiable. Suspected human remains, inclusive of feet, bones and skulls, among other body parts, were recovered.
Assistance in processing the crime scene was provided by members of the Special Anti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and Tobago, and the Major Investigation Task Force of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
The Home Affairs Ministry’s release also said investigators advised that the identification of the murdered victims could only have been done by way of DNA analysis, and as a result, samples of the human remains taken from the crime scene were transported by the Jamaican Team (which included a forensic pathologist) to the Jamaican Forensic Laboratory for analysis, while the remainder was stored at Lyken’s Funeral Parlour in Georgetown.
The ministry said the Jamaican Constabulary Force submitted a report of a partial analysis that was conducted, and promised to submit the full findings by the end of January 2012.
According to the ministry, the remains at Lyken’s Funeral Parlour formed a vital part of the evidence collected; and although it is usual for the bodies of persons killed in murders to be disposed of after a post-mortem examination by handing over their bodies to relatives; in the Lindo Creek case, what is exceptional is that the victims were not identified, and therefore could not have been handed over to anyone nor disposed of by the State, due to emotional issues normally associated with their relatives.
The result is that, apart from the samples taken to Jamaica, the remains were still at Lyken’s at the expense of the State.

Controversy
The ministry’s statement added that, because of the controversy surrounding the Lindo Creek incident, the GPF sought to exercise caution in the storage of the victims’ remains, and there was no viable option available at the time to facilitate storage of the remains, neither did the GPF anticipate that it would have taken a long period of time to obtain the DNA results.
The ministry maintained that none of the financial regulations was breached, and the expenditure was charged to the correct Line Item –‘6294 – Other’ in the current allocation of the GPF. This Line item caters for payment of expenses relative to cases of unnatural death, where the GPF has to intervene, which invariably leads to situations where it has to engage the services of funeral parlours for the transportation and storing of dead bodies prior to their disposal by way of burial by relatives of the deceased or the State, the ministry explained.
The ministry said it wishes to reiterate that, at all times, appropriate efforts are made to ensure that money allocated to it and its departments is expended in such a manner that value is received for such expenditure.
Those presumed to have been murdered in the Lindo Creek mass killings are Bonny Harry, Dax Arokium, Cecil Arokium, Clifton Wong, Nigel Torres, Compton Speirs, Horace Drakes and Lancelot Lee.