Colombia Three’s 17-year jail term ‘severe and surprising’

THE 17-year prison sentences handed down to three Irishmen for training FARC terrorists in Colombia was last night criticised by Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern as “surprising” and “severe”.

In his first response to the punitive terms, Mr Ahern described them as very severe, made more surprising by the complete overturning of the men’s acquittal in April.

He said his officials would now examine the 120-page judgment to see if there was a “grain of promise” for the three men.

He also described as “unhelpful” Ian Paisley junior’s comments that Christmas had come early for people in Northern Ireland.

In an outraged reaction to the verdict, the group campaigning for their freedom condemned it as a “mammoth miscarriage of justice”.

Spokesperson Caitríona Ruane, a Sinn Féin MLA, said the Government needs to act. “I have called on them to intervene at the highest level. We will now be internationalising this campaign further.”

The judgment and sentences were also criticised by former Foreign Affairs Minister David Andrews, who described them as “shocking”.

Yesterday’s decision overturned the original acquittal last April of Niall Connolly, 38, from Dublin; James Monaghan, 58, from Donegal, and Martin McCauley, aged 41, from Armagh, on charges of training FARC guerrillas in Colombia. The men denied the charges and said they were studying the country’s peace process when arrested in August 2001. They were convicted for travelling on false passports and would have expected to have returned to Ireland had yesterday’s verdict been in their favour. After the April acquittal, the three were freed on bail but were not allowed to leave Colombia. A warrant was issued for their arrest yesterday.

The three were detained at Bogota’s El Dorado airport in 2001 as they were about to board a flight out of the country. It emerged they spent a number of weeks in an area controlled by Marxist FARC guerrillas, who allegedly have links with narco-terrorism.

Monaghan and McCauley were said to be IRA members and both have been convicted in the past for IRA-related activity. Prosecutors alleged they trained FARC in urban guerrilla techniques.