No clean solution in sight for Three

LISTENING to Michael McDowell sound off about Sinn Féin and the Colombia Three was a bit like witnessing the tail-end of a Mediterranean storm.

You know that it has passed. You can see that the lightning has moved off over the horizon but you are still hearing the deafening roar of delayed thunder.

The huffery and puffery wasn’t surprising (it is the Mullah after all and it is the Shinners he is going on about). But what was surprising was that his first pronouncement was so political. You could have predicted what he was going to say about Adams’s family values long before he wound himself up for fulmination. He had some stuff to say about the possible legal options. But nothing to suggest there is any clear pathway open to extradite the three men to Colombia.

Sure, there is an international arrest warrant out for the men. And sure, Colombia is a signatory of international conventions of which Ireland is a party. But they specify categories of offences which don’t give any fit with what the work of the three republican missionaries was.

The absence of a bilateral extradition treaty between Ireland and Colombia is the biggest stumbler. And even if that were to happen, the provisions of the 1965 Extradition Act would indicate that the prospect of the men being extradited was remote. Are the offences political in nature? Under the act, extradition shall not be granted if the offence is regarded as a political offence or as an offence connected with a political offence.

While the definition of political offence was recast by then Chief Justice Thomas O’Higgins in 1984, allowing for the extradition of Dominic McGlinchey, it would prove a huge barrier to any request made by the Colombian authorities.

And is there an equivalent offence in Ireland to that with which they were charged? Moreover, Colombia’s questionable judicial system and its dodgy records on human rights would also mean that a request would be mired for years.

Politically, this was such a crafty coup by the republican movement. The sudden appearance of James Monaghan on RTÉ with his fetching foxy-coloured highlights showed just how completely they had outflanked their opponents.

Here was a classic example of a cuckoo placing its egg in the nest with no hope of dislodging it. By timing it so closely with the IRA statement, they calculate that they can weather the storm before they get round to talks about any real deal on the North. Sinn Féin have been busy harping on the of merits of forgiving and forgetting, hectoring all and sundry to leave the poor men return to their lives in peace.

The Government also knew the damage it would cause. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern broke his holidays in Kerry and there was a lot of optics to show how seriously they were taking it. The Irish ambassador to Mexico was dispatched to Bogota. The US Ambassador James Kenny and the British chargé d’affaires Ted Hallett were briefed in Dublin.

But Mr Ahern and Mr McDowell know that they have been snookered. Mr Ahern will also have to counter allegations that this was all part of some clandestine side-deal that was forged with SF in order to gain the greater prize.

The case of the Colombia Three stinks to high heaven. It’s inarguable that Colombia is hardly a beacon of democracy. It’s true also that the way in which an acquittal was reversed so dramatically by a closed appeal court was highly dubious, to say the very least.

But the three intrepid travellers hardly came looking for justice with clean hands. Sinn Féin ducked and weaved when all this first landed on their laps in August 21.

First there was the denial (nope, Niall Connolly is not a Sinn Féin representative in Cuba). Then we were told they were eco-tourists in search of armadillos and the lesser spectacled bear. Finally, they settled on a story that they were there to study the Colombian peace process (on whose behalf?).

There have been too many gaps in the narrative. Too many inconsistencies. Too many silences since the three absconded last December.

A mote in the eye when it comes to selective victimisation. And somewhere in that political jungle, truth, like the three men, can make a habit of vanishing without trace.