Gail Alexan­der

More bone frag­ments found un­der the Red House last Sat­ur­day and yes­ter­day are be­ing ex­am­ined by ex­perts, in­clud­ing those from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, whose as­sess­ment should be com­plet­ed in a few weeks.A skull, pelvic bone and fe­mur were found be­neath the Red house last Sat­ur­day and two more frag­ments were found yes­ter­day.

This was con­firmed by Ude­cott and Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials when Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal vis­it­ed the Red House yes­ter­day to in­spect the ar­eas where the first set of bones and arte­facts were found on March 25.On that date Ude­cott work­ers in­volved in the Red House restora­tion made the first dis­cov­ery in sev­en-foot deep pits dug to test the Red House foun­da­tions.Par­lia­ment had called in foren­sic ex­perts which con­firmed they were hu­man re­mains.

The Par­lia­ment is in the process of hav­ing the bones car­bon-dat­ed to as­cer­tain the ex­act age. Arche­ol­o­gist Pe­ter Har­ris has ad­vised the bones and arte­facts may date back to Amerindi­an times.Yes­ter­day Mooni­lal was giv­en this in­for­ma­tion and was shown four of the 16 in­spec­tion pits be­ing dug in and around the Red House com­pound and where the bones and arte­facts were found.

Mooni­lal was told by Par­lia­ment project su­per­vi­sor, Neil Jages­sar, that part of a skull and pelvic bone and what ap­peared to be a fe­mur (thigh bone), about 12 inch­es in length, were found in a pit dug near the Knox Street side of the build­ing last Sat­ur­day.Those frag­ments were the lat­est found since the March 25 dis­cov­ery, Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials said. Two oth­er frag­ments were al­so found yes­ter­day, it was con­firmed.

Mooni­lal, who said he had want­ed to take a look at the sit­u­a­tion, quipped: "We have con­firmed the bones are not that of any dead politi­cian or any­one who's po­lit­i­cal­ly dead but still alive,"Say­ing the bones might pre-date the Red House, he added: "The ma­jor­i­ty of the bones have been placed by the Par­lia­ment. They have ex­perts, now be­ing as­sist­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi and the arche­o­log­i­cal unit, look­ing to date all of the bones.

"This tech­ni­cal process should take two or three weeks and then they would be in a po­si­tion to say how old the bones are."Mooni­lal said it might be that they pre-date the ear­ly 1900s. He said some of the back­fill­ing un­der the Red House came from along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and it was pos­si­ble that back­fill con­tained bone frag­ments. "We don't know yet," he added.

Not a crime scene

Mooni­lal said Homi­cide de­tec­tives vis­it­ed the Red House and had cleared it as a crime scene, in­di­cat­ing no foul play was in­volved con­cern­ing the bones.He said Ude­cott was on tar­get with Red House restora­tion and he was sat­is­fied with progress.

He said the job, cost­ing over $.5 bil­lion, is pro­ject­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2015. Gov­ern­ment is do­ing pa­per­work to re­lo­cate the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry from Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, to clear the way for con­struc­tion of the planned com­pan­ion build­ing for the Red House on that site.