Colombian rebel tells of 'foreign' trainers

A jailed Marxist guerrilla told a Colombian court today he saw three foreigners training rebels and testing weapons and drove one of them around.

Edwin Giovanny Rodriguez, a jailed member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said he was in charge of driving and guarding one of the men, whom he described as a middle-aged, white-haired man who didn’t speak much, if any Spanish.

Though Rodriguez did not identify him directly, it appeared he was referring to James Monaghan, who fits that description.

“I saw him frequently because I was responsible for taking him to the room where he was teaching,” he said.

Monaghan, Niall Connolly and Martin McCauley were arrested in August 2001 at Bogota’s airport after visiting a FARC stronghold.

Rodriguez said that when the men were arrested, he recognised the white-haired man on television news reports.

Rodriguez, who testified in the Bogota court wearing a bullet-proof vest and surrounded by a dozen armed guards, said he saw the man and two other foreigners conducting training classes and then testing weapons inside the stronghold during three weeks in February.

Speaking softly, Rodriguez said he worked directly for Jorge Briceno, alias Mono Jojoy, the military commander of the FARC.

He said that Briceno and Manuel Marulanda, the FARC high commander, were among a group of rebels who accompanied the three foreigners to the village of Los Pozos to test various explosives, including home-made surface-to-air missiles.

Los Pozos was the site of failed peace negotiations between the FARC and the government.

He said after the tests were completed, the white-haired man got in a truck with Briceno and left. Rodriguez said he never saw any of the three men after that day.

The judge in the case asked Rodriguez for the names of the men, but he said he was illiterate and had trouble understanding foreign names. He also said Briceno had told him not to talk to the foreigners.

Rodriguez, jailed on charges of being a member of the FARC, had refused to testify earlier this week, saying he feared for his life.

The judge ordered he and his family be placed in a witness protection programme and said he could testify today.

A Colombian army major testified in December that the nation’s largest rebel group had received sophisticated technology in the past few years that only could have been obtained from abroad.

The three suspects, who were travelling on false passports, insist they were in Colombia to observe the peace process between former President Andres Pastrana and the FARC.

Gerry Adams has said Connolly was the Latin American representative for the party.

Monaghan is an IRA veteran who was convicted in 1971 for possessing explosives and conspiring to cause explosions.

McCauley was wounded during a police ambush at an IRA arms dump in 1982 and was later convicted of weapons possession.