3 IRA-linked fugitives back in Ireland - Trained FARC in Columbia

DUBLIN -- Three men linked to the Irish Republican Army who were convicted of training rebels in Colombia have returned surreptitiously to Ireland, eight months after going on the run.

RTE, the Irish national broadcasters, carried an interview with one of the fugitives, Jim Monaghan. He said all three had returned to Ireland recently, ''and, as you can imagine, a lot of people in a lot of countries had to help us."

Monaghan would not provide details of how the three evaded the international arrest warrant facing them. He insisted he did not consider himself ''on the run" -- and hoped that Ireland would not extradite them to Colombia.

Monaghan, Niall Connolly, and Martin McCauley were arrested in August 2001 as they were trying to board a flight out of Colombia after spending about 18 months with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia's major rebel group known by the acronym FARC.

The men were charged with training rebels to make and deploy IRA-style weaponry, including truck-mounted mortars. They initially were acquitted of all major charges, but were ordered to remain in Colombia pending the government's appeal to a higher court, which in December convicted and imposed 17-year prison sentences on the men. The three immediately disappeared.

Since then, Irish and British media reports have placed all three either in Venezuela or Cuba, where Connolly had been based for several years.

The trio's unexpected reappearance on Irish soil sent shock waves through Northern Ireland's peace process, which has been taking dynamic turns in recent days.

The IRA last week declared that its 1997 cease-fire was permanent and promised to resume disarmament soon, and Britain began dismantling army installations in response.

Spokesmen for the British and Irish governments denied yesterday any advance knowledge of the three men's return.

.........Irish and British media reports have placed all three either in Venezuela or Cuba, where Connolly had been based for several years. .......

U.S.: Venezuela working to destabilize neighbors

Hurricane Hugo***....And, as it happened, on the same day Hebraica was raided, Chávez was on a state visit to Iran. Just that morning, the Tehran Times had quoted his praise of President Khatami and the Iranian theocracy. Analysts in Venezuela suspect the true purpose of the raid originated in Chávez's eagerness to display solidarity with the Iranian mullahs. Chávez had traveled to Iran by way of Tripoli, where he described himself as "bathed in honor" after receiving the fantastically named Muammar Qaddafi Prize for Human Rights. In his acceptance speech Chávez was unequivocal: The "time is right to unite and face the imperialist challenge. Like Yasser Arafat, I now have only the revolutionary's gun since the olive branch has fallen."

Days afterward, Chávez accused Washington of unleashing "real terrorism" in Iraq and called for a "jihad" on American imperialism. Appearing on Al Jazeera, he described President Bush's foreign policy as vigilante violence: "It is not a war on terrorism, it is terrorism itself." From Iran, Chávez traveled to China, where he announced that China would replace the United States as the principal beneficiary of Venezuelan oil. By the end of his trip, Chávez had signed agreements with President Hu Jintao granting the China National Petroleum Corporation control of 15 Venezuelan oil fields, thereby securing for China a billion barrels of Venezuelan crude. Shortly after, Chávez declared himself a Marxist-Leninist in a speech in Calcutta. He then signed petroleum agreements with the Indian government while again indicating his desire to cut off Venezuelan oil exports to the United States.

In addition to his ideological alliances, petro-politics, and support for guerrilla terror throughout Latin America, Chávez has begun expanding Venezuela's military capability. In the past year he has more than tripled the Venezuelan military budget, purchasing 20 high-performance MiG fighter jets and 100,000 AK-47 machine gun rifles from the Russian government as well as an unprecedented number of helicopter gunships, surface-to-air missiles, and Onyx missiles (which can sink aircraft carriers). This spring, Chávez defended Iran's nuclear development program after warmly receiving their president in Venezuela and signing new "technological" treaties. In March he announced the creation of a two-million man reserve army to defend the revolution "against the American invasion." ..............***

Using oil to spread revolution - CAFTA "a national-security vote" slows Chavista expansionism Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

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************Is Iran helping Venezuela going nuclear?
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How low is Blair prepared to stoop?

Lindy McDowell

10 August 2005
There's more chance of Jeffrey Donaldson becoming Taoiseach than there is of the Irish Government extraditing the Colombia Three back to Bogota.

Put it like this, as with the possibility of a DUPer in the Dail, there's not exactly a whole lot of precedent.

Why should an Irish government extradite all the way to a tough prison in Colombia three men convicted of training terrorists there?

Given that over the years, successive Irish governments refused to extradite terrorist killers a few miles up the road to Northern Ireland - and the comparatively cushy regime chez our fabulously well-appointed, five-star Maze (free association, visits as and when you like, fly-fishing classes, sausage rolls baked to your specifications. . . )

Back then, the excuse given was that the killers in question could not be extradited because their crimes were "political."

Oddly though, the Irish government has never accepted that "political" killing could take place on its own patch.

Thus, when a policeman was gunned down by IRA terrorists in the north it may have been regarded as "political" by our neighbours in the south.

But when a policeman (Garda McCabe) was gunned down by IRA terrorists in their own jurisdiction, that was a criminal killing.

Irish television viewers may have gasped when Justice Minister Michael McDowell winkled out of Mitchell McLaughlin the shocking Shinner verdict on the horrific murder of Jean McConville - wrong but not a crime.

They appear to forget that for years their own government operated much the same policy with regard to the murder of human beings on this side of the border.

Political - so not a crime.

And let's not kid ourselves, there are many in Ireland today who would still regard the exploits of the Colombia Three as "wrong but not a crime."

Certainly not a crime that warrants their extradition to a smelly, dodgy cell on the other side of the world.

The greatest pressure on Bertie then, is likely to come not from within the Irish state - but from without.

The Americans in particular are unlikely to be too highly impressed by the recent re-emergence on RTE of the Three Amigos whose links to the narco-terrorist outfit Farc, has particular significance in their own country.

Farc is the terrorist organisation that supplies America's drug dealers with most of their cocaine. In this instance the American administration will understandably wish to back up the calls by the Colombian government for the trio to be send back to face justice.

But again isn't there just a whiff of double standards at work here too?

For again, over the years, the American government hasn't exactly shown willing about extraditing back to this place wanted terrorists including high profile IRA killers.

And again, it was a case of excusing murder as being "political" - and agonising about the conditions those poor murdering souls might face back in the aforementioned Maze.

Ironic that, given that those same high-minded Americans now appear to have no pangs of guilt whatsoever about consigning terrorists on their own patch to the blatantly human-rights-free zone that is Guantanamo

Meanwhile as the Irish, the Colombians and the Yanks try to sort out the extradition mess between them, Gerry Adams sees it in much simpler terms.

Gerry's delighted they're back.

"I'm delighted the three of them are back. I'm delighted for themselves as individuals but I'm especially delighted for their families. They're back and that's a good thing," says Gerry.

That would be the same Gerry Adams who, when the three were originally scooped, implied he had no idea who on earth they were and that he had absolutely no connection with them.

That would be the same Gerry Adams who insists he was never in the IRA but who, we are assured by the governments, has now resigned from the IRA's army council.

That would be the same Gerry Adams Mr Blair expects us to trust - when it is blatantly obvious that Tony doesn't actually trust the Sinn Fein leader himself. (Why no handshake, Tone?)

That would be the same Gerry Adams, voicepiece for a Republican movement that continues to runs rings around the two governments on this side of the Atlantic and treats with contempt even its one-time allies in Irish America.

And why shouldn't it? It gets away with it.

Has a deal been done over the Colombia Three?

Who cares. Whoever brought home the Colombia Three, has finally brought home the complete contempt the IRA has for the legal process in any juridiction.

We've now reached the point in this circus of concession upon concession to terrorists where faith in the so-called peace process has been more comprehensively dismantled than a border watchtower.

After the release of killer Kelly, the shameful treatment of the Royal Irish, the "demilitarisation" without so much as an IRA gun in return, the proposed amnesty for the On The Runs, the downgrading of the Northern Bank investigation and now the sudden reappearance of the Colombia Three . . the question is where does the Blair government's kowtowing to terrorism end?

So what next, Tony?

How low can you go?

Colombia official urges extradition of 3 men
August 12, 2005

NORTHERN IRELAND

BELFAST -- The three men linked to the Irish Republican Army who recently went into hiding in Ireland helped advance the weaponry and bombing techniques of leftist rebels in Colombia and should be extradited to the South American nation, Colombia's vice president declared yesterday. The three Irishmen fled Colombia and recently arrived in Ireland. ''These improvements in explosives by the FARC did not come from an Al Qaeda or anarchist website," Vice President Francisco Santos wrote in The Irish Times, referring to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. ''They came from the direct training of people like James Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley." Santos wrote in the editorial that ''hundreds of Colombians have met their deaths at the hands of the FARC and their new, 'improved' unconventional explosives and tactics." Monaghan, Connolly, and McCauley were arrested in Colombia in 2001 and served three years in prison for traveling with falsified passports. A court acquitted them of charges that they had trained FARC rebels, but last December the men were convicted following a government appeal of that decision allowable under Colombian law. (Los Angeles Times) via Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2005/08/12/colombia_official_urges_extradition_of_3_men?mode=PF

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