Colombian prosecutors interrogate alleged IRA members

Colombian prosecutors have completed their initial questioning of three alleged IRA members arrested on suspicion of training guerrillas in the use of explosives.

The prosecutors now have five days to decide whether there is probable cause to keep the men in custody and open a formal criminal investigation, Maria Eugenia Almonacid, Colombia’s chief counter-terrorism prosecutor, said in the capital Bogota.

Earlier prosecutors questioned two of the suspects, identified by Colombian and British officials as James Monaghan and Martin McCauley. A third suspect, whom Garda have identified as Niall Connolly, was questioned on Tuesday.

Almonacid would not disclose what was said in questioning.

The three were arrested in Bogota on Saturday after stepping off a flight from a southern Colombian town controlled by the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

They have yet to be formally charged with any crime. However, the mere allegations of a FARC-IRA alliance have already shaken confidence in the troubled peace processes in both Colombia and Northern Ireland.

In announcing the captures on Monday, military officials said the men were members of an IRA unit who had spent five weeks inside a rebel enclave, trading terrorist expertise gleaned in the IRA’s independence struggle from Britain for either guns, cash or cocaine.

The three suspects, all Irish, have not made any formal statements to the media. British authorities have still not said whether they will seek extradition.

Monaghan and McCauley were seen yesterday being taken to the federal prosecutor’s office inside a covered flatbed truck filled with helmeted military police.

Connolly, whom officials say speaks Spanish and was the leader of the group, was seen yesterday at the 13th Military Police Brigade in the capital where the three suspects are being held.

Approached by a reporter at brigade headquarters, where Connolly was using a phone to speak to a lawyer and send a fax, the suspect said he had ‘‘nothing to say’’ to the media. He was not handcuffed, but had a military police escort.

Connolly was the last of the trio - all travelling on false passports - to be identified. Originally from suburban Dublin, he went to Latin America as an aid worker a decade ago, spending several years in Cuba.

Monaghan and Martin McCauley have both had IRA convictions and were activists from the Sinn Fein party. The commander of the Garda, Commissioner Pat Byrne, said on Tuesday night that all three were on his anti-terrorist detectives’ list of Provisional IRA members.