February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The trio’s spokesperson, Sinn Fein MLA Ms. Caitriona Ruane, said of the ruling, “This is a travesty of justice of international proportions.”
Some U.S. officials, however, are calling the conviction justice finally dispensed.
“There never was a benign explanation of why two IRA explosive experts using false passports were wandering around in the Colombian jungle with known members of the narco-terrorist group FARC,” Rep. Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican, said in a statement.
Hyde chaired the U.S. congressional inquiry into the Colombia Three affairs in April 2002. Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams refused to testify at that hearing because he said the inquiry might prejudice the men’s court case.
The reversal of the men’s acquittal was perceived by some as a vindication for Hyde’s congressional hearings.
“Colombia’s court decision provides the answer and appropriate punishment for training terrorists who target innocents and who traffic in deadly drugs to Americans and Europeans alike,” Hyde added.
Many lawyers and politicians have spoken out on the court’s decision last week, but nothing has been heard from the three men themselves.
“For their own safety, no one, not me, their family or their lawyers, have spoken to the men since last June,” Ruane said.
In June 2004, the three Irishmen walked out of a prison in Bogota, where they had refused to leave since being acquitted in April of the charges that they had trained Marxist rebels, the FARC, in urban explosives techniques. A judge had ruled that the men had to stay in Colombia while the government’s appeal of the acquittal moved forward. The men said they stayed in the prison for fear of assassination but finally went into hiding in an undisclosed location to presumably await the outcome of the government’s appeal to the lower court ruling.
Speculation on the trio’s whereabouts was stoked when Colombia’s attorney general, Luis Camilo Osario, told reporters last week that he believed the men had fled the country.
U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies believe the men could be in Cuba.
“If they have left at all, they would have exited through Venezuela or Ecuador, where there are porous borders and then we believe they would have gone on to Cuba,” one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
One of the lawyers for the men, Augustin Jimenez, told reporters in Bogota that he did not believe the men had left Colombia.
Osorio said that Colombia would seek international assistance to apprehend the trio, who Colombian authorities claim have left the country.
Paris-based Interpol said it has issued a formal arrest warrant assist in apprehending the men.
Some U.S. authorities, especially conservatives on Capitol Hill who have supported U.S. military intervention in Colombia’s war on cocaine production, have taken an especially harsh stance against three men charged with helping Marxist guerillas upgrade their explosives techniques. The men were arrested at the El Dorado airport in Bogota in August 2001. A U.S. congressional inquiry was launched into the matter in April 2002. The Republican staff on the investigating committee said at that time there was ample evidence indicating the three men helped the FARC guerilla group with explosive productions, but the Democratic committee staff did not agree.
“No one ever wanted to talk about this case — we were always told ‘It’s not a good time in the peace process’ to talk about the case,” said one senior Republican congressional staff member.
“Well, there was never going to be a good time, and now it’s come down on the Colombian justice system’s time frame.”
During the men’s initial trial, the three admitted they had traveled to the former rebel-held FARC area while in Colombia but that they were there as interested observers of the then ongoing peace process and as eco-tourists.
Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern echoed the advice senior Irish diplomats have offered to the three: pursue the appeals process that remains through the Colombian judicial system.
“We are of course concerned about the men’s consular needs, but we believe the best course is for them to proceed through the Colombian judicial system,” a senior Irish diplomat said.
Ireland’s ambassador to Mexico with jurisdiction over Colombia, Art Agnew, is back in Ireland for the Christmas holidays but has been coordinating communications between Dublin and Bogota.
Irish, U.S. and British officials knew that a decision on the Colombian government’s appeal of Jude Jairo Acosta’s acquittal of the men was likely to come down last week.
Ruane said she would raise the 17-year prison term before the European Parliament.
The court sentenced Connolly and Monaghan to 17 years and six months in prison and fined them $225,000. McCauley was sentenced to 17 years and fined $190,000.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said the best bet for the men would be for them to make their own appeal to the Colombian Supreme Court.
Ruane, who flew to Bogota last weekend along with Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly to meet with the men’s lawyers, said that is not an option because the process could take three to six years.
“The last time I saw the men was the morning we took them out of the jail in June, and we have not heard from the since,” Ruane said.
Asked whether the men should be included in the Good Friday amnesty clauses for “on the runs,” Ruane said such a deal was unlikely.
There is no current extradition treaty between Ireland and Colombia, so the men would be virtually “untouchable” if they turned up back home in Ireland.
“This campaign will continue, intensify and we will internationalize it. We are not prepared to accept this blatant violation of Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan’s rights,” Ruane told reporters in Bogota.