The Guyana gov­ern­ment has giv­en the fam­i­ly of the mur­dered 11-year Adri­an­na Younge that it is pro­vid­ing full sup­port in their pur­suit of truth and jus­tice.

‘There is ab­solute­ly no is­sue (with your re­quests for an in­de­pen­dent pathol­o­gist), Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali told Adri­an­na’s moth­er, aunt, and grand­moth­er on Sat­ur­day, giv­ing his per­son­al as­sur­ance that all their re­quests re­lat­ing to the post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion would be ho­n­oured with­out hes­i­ta­tion.

The gov­ern­ment had sought the ser­vices of Bar­ba­di­an ex­pert Dr Shub­hakar Kar­ra Paul to con­duct the au­top­sy, but the fam­i­ly mem­bers have opt­ed to have the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion (FBI) or oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al law en­force­ment bod­ies to in­ves­ti­gate the young girl’s death.

Me­dia re­ports here Sun­day said that two foren­sic pathol­o­gists from the Unit­ed States are due to con­duct the au­top­sy of the body of child that had been found in a pool at Dou­ble Day Ho­tel, Tuschen, East Bank Es­se­qui­bo.

The Min­istry of Health has added Dr. Glenn A. Rud­ner, a foren­sic and anatom­ic pathol­o­gist af­fil­i­at­ed with Mount Sinai Hos­pi­tal and the Ic­ahn School of Med­i­cine in New York City.

Trinidad and To­ba­go-born Chief Med­ical Ex­am­in­er of the US State of Delaware, Dr. Gary Collins is al­so due here for the au­top­sy.

Ali said that the fam­i­ly’s lawyer, Dar­ren Wade, had al­ready sub­mit­ted a let­ter out­lin­ing spe­cif­ic re­quests re­gard­ing the au­top­sy process.

He said that the let­ter has since been for­ward­ed to the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer, who will co­or­di­nate di­rect­ly with the pathol­o­gist se­lect­ed by the fam­i­ly.

The Guyana Po­lice Force (GPF) has been or­dered to en­sure that every step of the process, in­clud­ing the au­top­sy, be video­taped to re­move any doubt or mis­steps.

“We want full trans­paren­cy,” Ali told the fam­i­ly mem­bers, em­pha­sis­ing his com­mit­ment to a thor­ough and fair in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“As much wit­ness­es the fam­i­ly want there (au­top­sy process) and is med­ical­ly per­mis­si­ble, all of that and [all their] re­quests will be ho­n­oured,” he said.

Younge’s body was found in the ho­tel pool in stark con­trast to the po­lice say­ing that she was seen en­ter­ing a car that was iden­ti­fied by colour and li­cence num­ber.

For its part, the GPF said, “It is sig­nif­i­cant to note that the Guyana Po­lice Force is al­so await­ing the ar­rival of an­oth­er in­de­pen­dent pathol­o­gist who was iden­ti­fied by fam­i­ly mem­bers of the de­ceased to per­form the post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion.

“The post-mortem ex­am­i­na­tion is an im­por­tant as­pect of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in or­der to con­firm the cause of death of Adri­ana Younge,” the po­lice added.

Mean­while As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Khalid Man­dall was re­moved from his post as Com­man­der of Re­gion­al Po­lice Di­vi­sion Three on Fri­day and re­placed by As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ma­hen­dra Si­w­nar­ine fol­low­ing the death of Adri­an­na.

Ac­cord­ing to Si­w­nar­ine the re­as­sign­ments are ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly.

There have been many calls for the res­ig­na­tion of Man­dall due to out­rage over the po­lice’s han­dling of Adri­an­na’s dis­ap­pear­ance.