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....***
This isn't a commercial for Al Jazeera, but that would be a close guess. It's a promotional campaign for a continent wide, pan-American satellite news channel that made its debut on July 24.
Witness Telesur, the brainchild of Cuban communist Fidel Castro and his ideological spawn Hugo Chávez. They say that it was created to both compete with foreign media conglomerates and offer a side of the news that is uniquely Latino. Independent, they say, from any voice but that of the people. The truth, however, is far from their propaganda platforms. Telesur is being funded by the leftist governments in Uruguay, Argentina, and Cuba, with Venezuela alone controlling 51% of the company. It will be housed in Caracas at the headquarters of Venezuela state media, where Chávez regularly opines for hours on end about impending imperialist invasion to the delight of only 2% of the Venezuelan public. …………………***