Fw: Colombia IRA suspects say spies invented charges

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg@tin.it>]

Sent: Sunday, September 09, 2001 7:06 PM
Subject: Colombia IRA suspects say spies invented charges 


 
 Colombia IRA suspects say spies invented charges
 Special report: Northern Ireland
 
 Reuters
 Friday September 7, 2001
 The Guardian
 
 Three suspected IRA members held in Colombia for
 allegedly training Marxist guerrillas accused foreign
 intelligence agencies yesterday of inventing the
 charges to derail peace efforts in Northern Ireland.
 
 In an interview with Caracol television inside
 Bogota's La Modelo prison, Niall Connolly, Martin
 McCauley and James Monaghan who have spent three weeks
 in custody said they were visiting Colombia to learn
 about its peace process.
 
 "We are not terrorists," Connolly, who has been
 described as the Latin America representative for Sinn
 Fein based in Cuba since 1996, said in competent
 Spanish.
 
 Colombia's public prosecutor's office has eight months
 to prepare its case against the three, who are accused
 of training the Farc - the Revolutionary Armed Forces
 of Colombia - to make bombs and other weapons during
 five weeks in a demilitarised enclave under rebel
 control.
 
 The three men complained of their treatment in one of
 Colombia's most dangerous prisons."We've been holed up
 in this cell for several weeks, 24 hours a day without
 going out, we can't see the light of day, we haven't
 seen the sun and we haven't had enough access to our
 lawyer," Connolly said. Monaghan complained of not
 having fresh air in the cell and of suffering from
 headaches.
 
 The arrests of the three in August came at a sensitive
 time in peace efforts both in Northern Ireland and in
 Colombia, which is gripped by a 37-year-old war
 pitting leftist rebels against outlawed rightwing
 militias and the army. The war has claimed 40,000
 mostly civilian lives in the past 10 years.
 
 The arrests embarrassed Sinn Fein, which has been
 working hard to forge stronger ties in the United
 States.
 
 President Bush has said it would "raise troubling
 questions" if the IRA had links to the 17,000-member
 Farc, which US and Colombian drug officials say
 traffics cocaine to bankroll what the rebels say is a
 revolutionary struggle.