Posted on 07/07/2002 7:03:57 AM PDT by aculeus
US report claims mortar bombing of Colombian church which killed 117 civilians had 'IRA touch'
UNIONISTS have expressed serious concern at reports linking the Provisional IRA to the massacre of more than 100 civilians in a Colombian church last May.
A United States Senate report said that the worst civilian atrocity in the history of the bloody Colombian civil war used a sophistication not seen before the emergence of "foreign terrorist involvement" in the country.
The homemade mortar bomb device is described in the US Senate report as having "the IRA touch".
Northern Ireland's First Minister, David Trimble, was last night said to be "deeply concerned" about the scale of the IRA's links to the Marxist guerrilla group, Farc. A spokesman for the Ulster Unionist leader said that the murder of 117 Catholic civilians, many of them children, was "something of great concern, not least because those killed were taking refuge in a place of worship". He said the revelations could not have come at a worse time in the peace process.
The US report, issued by Republican party members of the Senate foreign relations committee, claims that an "intense and indiscriminate" urban bombing campaign stems directly from terrorism lessons given to Farc by the IRA.
The report includes a picture of a Colombian soldier holding a mortar identical to that used in the bombing of the church. The atrocity on May 9 claimed 117 lives after an IRA-style mortar brought down the roof of St Paul the Apostle Church in Bellavista. A third of the victims were children.
A spokesman for Mr Trimble, who was attending crisis talks about ongoing terrorist violence, said that the use of mortars developed by Irish Republicans "showed that the IRA have no qualms associating with organisations that commit wholly evil deeds".
US foreign relations committee staff, who travelled to Colombia in the last week in May, have reported that the Colombian government cannot cope with advanced new car bombs not seen in the country before "foreign terrorist involvement" with Farc, the guerrilla group which funds itself through drugs trafficking.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was not concerned about the impact the report would have on US involvement in the peace process. The Department did, however, admit that the Minister, Brian Cowen, had discussed the IRA's renewed terrorist connections in Colombia with the US special envoy to Ireland, Richard Hass.
A spokesman for the Department said that Mr Cowen hoped the use of IRA technology in Colombia would not prejudice the trials of three Irishmen arrested in Colombia in August after they tried to leave the country on false passports, purportedly following a wildlife expedition.
One of the three, James 'Mortar' Monaghan, has been identified by security sources as the IRA's chief bomb designer. The other two arrested are Niall Connolly, Sinn Fein's representative in Cuba and Martin McCauley.
The Bellavista church bombing is the largest single civilian atrocity in Colombia's civil war which claimed over 3,500 lives last year alone. © Irish Independent http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/
This also means I don't have my files & links handy. These groups are interconnected more than most people realize... see "The Web of Terror" for details.
LOL Now don't you worry Mr. Cowen, I am sure Mr. Mortar Monaghan is completely innocent of designing mortars to kill Columbian peasants. His name is just a coincidence;-)
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